When She Was Bad: A Thriller

by Jonathan Nasaw

  Neither Pender’s rubber-soled Hush Puppies nor Mick’s rubber-soled, negative-heeled Earth Shoes made any noise as they padded up the asphalt. There was a pickup truck parked at the top of the driveway, but no sign of Mama Rose or her bike. The garage door was locked. They walked around the side of the garage, saw Mama Rose’s Sportster parked next to a much larger Harley. Mick stooped to retrieve the transponder from the gas tank, then followed Pender around to the back of the darkened ranch house.

  Pender shone the flashlight around the narrow patio, illuminating, in turn: a trellis twined with pink roses, a wrought-iron patio table lying on its side, a redwood hot tub with a plywood cover, and when he trained the flashlight straight down, a puddle of some thick, black, half-congealed substance pooled in a shallow declivity in the concrete at their feet.

  Pender stooped, touched his forefinger to the sticky stuff, and brought it to his nose. The smell of blood was dreadfully familiar—his head jerked away from it so violently he almost sprained his neck.

  Ka-whoooshhh! The toilet again. Mick signaled for Pender to turn off the flashlight, then sidled through an open, sliding-glass doorway flanked by curtains. Pender followed. The house was even darker inside than out. From the end of a short hallway to their left came an indistinct grunting sound. Moving in lockstep, one behind the other like a baggy-pantsed vaudeville team, MacAlister and Pender followed the noise to the open doorway at the end of the corridor on the left.

  Inside, candlelight flickered. Mick signaled for Pender to wait in the hall, then slipped into the room sideways to present a slimmer target profile. A fat candle burned on a saucer on the bedside table; Mama Rose lay mummified on the bed, cocooned in winding sheets from neck to ankles, with a strip of torn linen serving as a gag, through which she grunted frantically, rolling her eyes toward the adjoining bathroom.

  Ka-whoooshhh! Mick held his pistol in a braced, two-handed firing position as he approached the open bathroom doorway. The DeVries girl, all but lost in an orange, hibiscus-pattered muumuu several sizes too large, was standing over the toilet, aiming a pencil flashlight straight down into the tank and watching in rapt fascination as the water level rose. She didn’t appear to have noticed Mick.

  “Pender, in here!”

  Pender hurried into the bedroom, caught sight of the girl in the bathroom. “Lily,” he called. No response. “Lily, it’s Uncle Pen.”

  Still no response. Pender put his arm around her and gently ushered her out into the dim light of the bedroom, where Mick had put his gun down, and was sawing through Mama Rose’s gag with his pocket jackknife.

  Goddamn pothead, thought Pender, seeing the gun lying useless on the bed. “For shit’s sake, Mick—”

  But it was too late. “Hands up, please!” called a high-pitched male voice, from the doorway.

  They all froze in place like a kid’s game of Statues, their shadows dancing nervously in the flickering candlelight. “Take it easy there, son,” said Pender, standing just outside the bathroom door with his arm still draped around Lily’s shoulders.

  “I said, everybody put your hands up,” Lyssy called petulantly, turning the gun from MacAlister to Pender and the girl, then back to MacAlister. But when Pender raised his hands, the girl darted into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her. Lyssy’s eyes flickered toward the sudden movement and noise. Seeing him distracted, Mick dropped the jackknife and dove for the gun.

  Lyssy whirled, his finger tightening on the trigger. Blam, blam, blam, blam—four shots. Blue flashes like lightning lit the room. A gobbet of something wet flew past Mama Rose’s head and hit the candle; the flame sizzled and died.

  “How come nobody ever listens to me?” Lyssy whined in the darkness, as the toilet began flushing again in the bathroom. “Nobody ever listens to me.”

  7

  Irene had no appointments scheduled for Thursday afternoon—according to her original schedule, she was still supposed to be in Portland. Her spirits somewhat buoyed by Pender’s mid-afternoon telephone call (from what she’d been able to make out over what sounded like the roar of a hurricane, he and MacAlister had an extremely promising lead and were driving up to Shasta to check it out), she’d spent the day catching up on a myriad of chores—correspondence, revisions for the new edition of her textbook on dissociative disorders, a little dusting, a little gardening.

  After supper (a prepacked salad of wilted baby greens, glazed pecans, crumbled feta, and dried cranberries from Trader Joe’s that had been in her fridge since Sunday—hence the wilted greens), Irene went outside to water her prize-winning Cecil Bruner roses, then ran the vacuum cleaner and did a load of laundry: as an eco-conscious, energy-saving Californian, she always did her watering and ran her major appliances in the evening.

  Irene locked up the house and went upstairs to bed around ten o’clock. She set her alarm, laid out her jogging outfit, changed into her last surviving pair of Frank’s oversize pajamas—she had to turn the sleeves and legs up several inches—and climbed into bed with the new issue of Psychology Today, which for her constituted light reading.

  At eleven, she switched off the light and turned on the TV at the foot of the bed to watch the news. KSBW, the NBC affiliate in Salinas, led with the story of last night’s murders in Oregon, hitting hard on the two local angles—Lily’s Pebble Beach address and Maxwell’s previous rampage in Monterey County.

  But there was no real clarification of Lily’s status. “Portland police say they still aren’t clear as to whether the young woman from Pebble Beach was involved directly with any of the killings, but stressed that until they know more, both fugitives should be considered armed and dangerous,” cautioned the sad-eyed, folksy anchorman with the David Letterman widow’s peak.

  “Oh, shut up,” said Irene, switching off the television. She lay there in the dark for another few minutes, then climbed out of bed and went back downstairs to double-check whether she had indeed locked both doors.

  As it turned out, she had—for all the good it would do.

  8

  “C’mon, Lilith, we have to find that money and get out of here.”

  Although she seemed to be unharmed physically, the girl’s repetitive, almost robotic preoccupation with the workings of the toilet had continued while Lyssy cuffed Pender to the brass rail of the headboard (“Is that too tight? Let me know if it’s too tight.”), gagged him with torn strips of sheeting (“I know it’s uncomfortable—there, is that better?”), then wrapped him with winding sheets (“Here we go round the mulberry bush.”) and left him lying there next to Mama Rose, similarly gagged, cuffed, and bound; they looked like two mummies lying with their hands raised in surrender.

  “C’mon, please?” There was no indication that Lilith recognized Lyssy. She seemed scarcely aware of his existence, or rather, of his existence as a fellow sentient being—for all the notice she took of him as he tugged her out of the bathroom, he might have been a mechanical device to which she was attached, a winch or a block and tackle.

  He closed the bathroom door, led her into the middle of the bedroom, and let go of her, just to see what she’d do. With the door closed, she appeared to have forgotten about her beloved toilet—out of sight, out of mind. Instead she glanced around the bedroom, where half a dozen candles now flickered and glowed, then made straight for the antique brass apothecary scale on the dresser, stepping over the denim-clad, ponytailed body of the dead interloper as if it were a log.

  Soon she was engrossed in balancing the counterpoised trays with the tiny brass milk-bottle–shaped weights; everything else, including Lyssy, had apparently ceased to exist for her.

  “Lilith, we have to go,” he said again, dumping the scale and weights into the pillowcase, along with Carson’s revolver, which he’d reloaded from a box of shells he’d found in the drawer of the bedside table. There was another pistol with a wooden handle in the other bedside table, but Lyssy decided to take the dead man’s gun instead. It was lying where it had fallen, inches from the outstr
etched hand of the now-faceless corpse. He picked it up and popped the clip to see how many rounds were left. There were fourteen, with another round in the chamber: Mick hadn’t fired a single shot.

  The girl watched from the bedroom doorway, fascinated, as Lyssy worked the pistol’s mechanism; now she held out her hand, making that mewing noise again, and stamping her bare foot on the doorstep.

  “Sorry, Charlie,” he told her—one of Dr. Al’s corny sayings. “These things are dangerous if you don’t know how to…holy cow.” He looked down at the gun in his hand—it had finally dawned on him that for all his demonstrated expertise, before this evening he himself had never fired a gun, never even held a pistol. And yet handling one seemed to be second nature to him. Which meant…what?

  His mind working at warp speed, he came up with three possibilities. The first was that he’d picked up his knowledge of firearms unconsciously, maybe from all the videos and TV shows he’d watched, and had proved to be a natural.

  Another possibility was that since he and his alters shared one brain, perhaps as the original personality he was able to draw upon the knowledge and experience of the alters without even being aware of it—which was a little scary.

  But there was a third possibility, even more frightening: that he was the one being used. By Max. Or guided, or controlled, or whatever you wanted to call it. A jolt of terror coursed through him at the thought. It was like that bad dream he used to have when he first came to the Institute, a nightmare where he’s running from a monster, and finally reaches a safe place. Only there’s a mirror there, and when he looks into it, he sees the monster’s face looking back at him and realizes he hasn’t escaped at all. And never would, because he was the monster and the monster was him.

  Then he heard that faint mewing sound again. He looked up, saw Lilith standing in the doorway wearing that ridiculous orange muumuu, looking for all the world like a little girl playing dress-up in Mommy’s clothes, and suddenly all that mattered to him was taking care of her.

  Earlier that evening, he’d found himself unable to carry through on his threat to torture Mama Rose until she told him where the money was. After running out of verbal threats, he’d settled for tying her up, covering the still-naked Lilith with a muumuu from the closet, and leaving the girl to entertain herself with the endlessly fascinating toilet while he disposed of the troll’s body, dumping it into the hot tub and dragging the plywood cover over the tub. Then he began his search of the house and grounds.

  He’d been going through the living room for the second time when he heard the two men out on the patio. He’d ducked behind the sofa, followed them into the bedroom, caught them by surprise.

  And now it was time to try playing the Spanish Inquisition game again. It occurred to Lyssy that he might be less inhibited if Lilith weren’t within earshot.

  “C’mon, let’s go find your own clothes,” he told her, dropping the second gun into the pillowcase sack, then holding it over his head and shaking it alluringly as he brushed by her on his way out of the room. Zombie-like, she turned and followed him down the short hallway, through the living room, and out onto the patio.

  The moon had risen since he’d last been out here, illuminating the overturned table, the scattered furniture, and the dark pool of blood. He righted the table, then dumped the scale and weights out for Lilith to play with while he snatched her sweater and jeans off the trellis where she’d draped them earlier.

  She neither resisted nor assisted him as he took off the muumuu. His breath caught in his throat to see her naked in the moonlight. He wrestled the sweater over her head, somehow pulled her arms through the sleeves, then knelt at her feet and lifted her legs one at a time, as if he were shoeing a horse, to get her jeans on. As he tugged them up past her knees, the back pocket turned inside out and a small white card fluttered to the ground.

  Lyssy picked it up, turned it over, shined his flashlight on it, and whistled under his breath. There, spelled out for his convenience, were the name, address, and phone numbers of Lily’s original psychiatrist, Dr. Irene Cogan, the woman he remembered from their stroll through the arboretum Monday afternoon.

  “You know what, I’m starting to think things might be turning our way,” he told Lilith, slipping the card into his own pocket. “You stay here, have fun with your new toys. I have to go talk to Mama Rose—I’ll be back soon.”

  Lyssy limped back inside to the bedroom where Pender and Mama Rose were tied up, pulled a chair over to Mama Rose’s side of the bed, leaned over, and tugged the gag from her mouth. Her face and hair were still spattered with gobbets of blood and brain matter, none of it her own. “I’m trying to be polite about this, ma’am. Dr. Al always said you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. And I’m sorry about what happened to your husband. I wish I could bring him back, I really do. But I have responsibilities now. I have Lilith to think of. And we’re going to need that money to have even a chance of surviving out there. So either you tell me where it is, or I have to…to…”

  His glance had fallen upon the mother-of-pearl-handled jackknife lying open on the bed.

  Sudden flash: a knife in a hand scarred and crippled like his own hand rises and falls, rises and falls against a backdrop of bright bunting and bobbing birthday balloons. Confusion—he is neither here nor there, neither himself nor someone else. The bed is an island, floating in a sea of darkness. There is only the knife in his hand and the redhead laid out before him, mummified like some kind of ritual sacrifice.

  Mama Rose, upon seeing him pick up the knife, shut her eyes. Her body tensed, waiting for the first blow to fall. And waiting. And waiting.

  “No!” Lyssy’s shout broke the silence, broke the spell. He flung the knife away. You can go to hell, he told them—Kinch, Max, whoever was listening. You can all go straight to hell.

  “The attic,” said Mama Rose weakly, without opening her eyes.

  Lyssy slumped back in his chair. “What?”

  “The money—it’s in the air conditioner in the attic.”

  “Oh.” Lyssy was so drained, it took a few seconds for the victory to soak in.

  Who’s nothing now, Mister Max? he thought, popping the gag back into Mama Rose’s mouth before leaving the bedroom; seconds later he was back, removing it again. “The lock on the trapdoor—what’s the combination?”

  She told him; back went the gag. It took Lyssy several tries—he’d never used a padlock of any sort—but eventually it popped open. He pushed the trapdoor up and over, boosted himself up into the attic. A cool night breeze wafted through the now-empty dormer window. Lyssy’s flashlight beam illuminated the dark hulk of the air conditioner on the floor.

  The fall had cracked the case and sprung the frame. Lyssy’s fingers pried loose the plastic panel in the back, which was held in place by four recessed screws. One last yank snapped off the corner of the panel, and a quick inspection with the flashlight ended the search: the air conditioner was indeed hollow, and stuffed with rubber-band-bound stacks of currency, as well as a hand-cranked clear plastic coin sorter and a sack of loose change.

  Half an hour later, with the cash in the trunk of the Cadillac at the bottom of the driveway (the keys had been in the ignition), Lyssy returned to the patio, where Lilith was still happily engrossed with her scale and weights, and lured her down to the car and into the backseat with the even more fascinating coin sorter.

  So far, so good, he thought as he fastened Lilith’s seat belt for her, slammed the back door, and limped around to the driver’s side of the car. But there was something nagging at the back of his mind—something undone or forgotten, some vague, inchoate misgiving. He tried to focus, tried to close his mind around it as he slid behind the wheel and turned the key, but nothing came to him.

  The engine roared to life. Lyssy experimented for a few seconds and discovered that he could work the accelerator by planting the heel of his prosthetic right foot on the textured rubber floor mat and the toe on the gas pedal, then pushing dow
n with his thigh to rock the foot forward, using the ankle spring as a fulcrum. He turned on the headlights, planted his left foot on the brake pedal, and shifted the Cadillac into gear.

  Lurch, screech, lurch, screech—it took a few minutes of trial and error, but eventually he got the hang of driving two-footed, and from then on, it was smooth sailing. And not only that, but by the time he figured out what had been nagging at him subconsciously—a minor detail: he’d never driven an automobile before—the point was utterly moot.

  I guess it just proves that whatever happens, I can handle it, Lyssy told himself. I can handle whatever happens.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  1

  After struggling against his bonds for hours, the only tangible progress Pender had made was in loosening his gag in order to breathe around it. But that was a not-unimportant achievement: it meant he could allow himself to fall asleep without having to worry about suffocating.

  Or not so much fall asleep as doze off for a few minutes before being jolted awake by the apnea that had prevented him from sleeping on his back for the last five years or so. It was an uncomfortable, even frightening feeling, awakening with the sound of your own snort still echoing in your ears, and realizing that the back of your throat had swollen shut, blocking both airways—but then, being awake was no goddamn picnic either.

  When he wasn’t thinking about the possibility of never being rescued, of dying here either of thirst or suffocation—which was not all that likely when you considered the situation rationally, he had to keep reminding himself—Pender had time to wrestle with his own shame and grief. He’d come to like Mick MacAlister in those last few hours—his mind-projector kept screening the clip of the two of them sitting on that old automobile seat on the hill behind the barn, harmonizing on a medley of pot songs—“One Toke Over the Line,” “The Joker,” and of course “Puff the Magic Dragon”—before the gnats and mosquitos chased them back inside the car.