The man stood over Kane for a moment. Then, suddenly, Kane sensed movement. He didn’t understand what it was, what the movement meant. All he saw was a blur in the dark, all he heard was the rustling of clothing. But then Kane felt something crash into him, crash into his chest, hard, and he understood finally the nature of the motion he had sensed.
The man stomped at Kane with his heavy boot, catching Kane dead center. Kane grunted as air rushed from his lungs. The boot came down a second time. Kane had brought his arms up, tried to protect himself. But it didn’t really do much. Whatever air had been left in his lungs was forced out as the second blow landed on his crossed arms. Now Kane’s lungs were a void inside him. They ached. He tried to breathe in, to refill his lungs, but he couldn’t. His wind was gone.
Kane curled up slightly, rolled onto his right side. It was the only thing he could do. The boot came down a third time, and though it wasn’t a stomp, there was nothing gentle about the way it landed. The hard rubber sole pressed against Kane’s shoulder with significant weight and force, pinning Kane to the cold floor.
He was still struggling to get air into his lungs. A new panic rushed through him, stronger than the panic he had felt before. Wild, furious, it was something he didn’t recognize. I’m suffocating. I can’t breathe. He gasped in a small amount of air, but it wasn’t enough. He struggled to gasp in a little more. But that was all he could do, make short, frantic gulps at nothing, gulps that did nothing. His panic intensified, ruling him now. It was as if in a second he had simply lost his mind. His lungs burned, he felt blood rush to his face, rush to it but not leave. The void in his chest seemed only to deepen. It was as if both his lungs had collapsed onto themselves, collapsed into nothingness.
The man bent down then, grabbed something that was lying near Kane’s head, stood up with it. It was the canvas bag. He opened it, searched through it as he listened to Kane gasp. He didn’t move for a moment, just stood there, looking at the camcorder he had found inside. Rage moved through him, rage born of betrayal. He shoved the camcorder back into the bag, bent down again. Suddenly Kane felt hands on him. He felt them searching the pockets of his coat, then his jeans. The hands were powerful, fast. They handled him roughly, like he was nothing. Kane felt one of the hands reach deep into his hip pocket and seize his wallet. He felt the hand pull at it. The wallet didn’t come out easily, though. The man pulled even harder, violently now. He didn’t care about Kane. Kane knew that. The man’s rage was evident to him. The wallet came free finally. A moment later a light came on, the bright white circle of a pocket flashlight floating in the dark above Kane. The light was shined into his eyes, cutting into them, painfully, then was gone. When Kane could see again, the light was illuminating his wallet. The man was holding it open, holding it up to the light. After another moment of stillness and silence, the wallet landed on the floor, not far from Kane’s head. The flashlight went out, and Kane heard the sound of a cell phone opening, heard the sound of it being dialed.
Kane remained still, the heavy boot holding him down. He couldn’t move if he wanted to. But he could breathe now—not deeply, not fully, not even enough. Still, the fear of suffocation was passing, the panic easing. Just let it come, relax and let the air come. Nothing else mattered to Kane right now but air, precious air.
Out of the darkness he heard a voice. Deep, but no accent. Not Clay, he thought. Still, clearly angry. Hellish, frightening, like the voice from a nightmare.
“It’s me,” the voice said. “Where the fuck are you? I’m out at the chapel. Call me back as soon as you can. It’s important.”
The lid of the cell phone closed. Nothing happened for a moment. No movement, no sound. Then the foot lifted from Kane’s shoulder. An instant later, though, it was pressing down onto the side of Kane’s face. Hard, harder than Kane could bear.
“Did she send you?” the man said. His voice was a hiss. The anger was unmistakable. Hatred, seething hatred. Kane could hear it, could feel it. “Did she send you? Huh? Are you fucking her? Are you fucking her, too?”
Kane didn’t answer. He didn’t yet have the air with which to speak. But even if he could, what would he say?
“Did she send you out here?” the man said. There was a kind of joy in his anger, Kane thought. No, not joy. Pleasure. “Are you her big hero now? Is that what’s going on? You going to save her?”
The foot pressed down harder still. Kane winced against it but couldn’t scream.
“She’s going to be sorry,” the man said. His hatred only seemed to grow. He seemed almost to want it, to want more and more of it. “Maybe I’ll squish her head, just like this. Stick my dick down her throat and make her choke on it, then squish her head. What do you think?”
The man pressed down even harder, putting all his weight behind it. Kane winced again, didn’t want to scream, but he couldn’t help it. The sound came out of him, erupting from his throat.
The man laughed. “That doesn’t hurt. You don’t know hurt—yet.”
The cell phone rang then, but it wasn’t till the second ring ended that the man lifted his foot. Kane heard the lid flip, heard the man say, “Yeah.” He could hear the voice on the other end, but not the words that were being spoken. Kane thought about moving, now that the foot was off him. But what would that do? He’d never been in a fight in his life, certainly not with a man the size of this giant. And Kane had no weapons, not that he’d know what to do with one if he had. But before he could begin to think through his doubts, to think that he really had no choice but to try, the foot came down on him again, this time onto his chest, pinning him. Kane braced against it as best he could, protecting the precious air inside his lungs.
“He’s here,” the man said. The voice on the other end said something. Then the man snapped, “No, not him. That teacher guy.” He waited, then, impatiently, said, “Yeah, I’m sure. I saw his license.”
Kane could hear the voice on the other end more clearly now. It was loud; whoever it was on the other end had clearly raised his voice. Still, though, Kane could hear no words. When the voice ended, the man spoke a little more calmly. But only a little.
“Yeah,” he said. “A fucking video camera. Do I take it or what?” He paused, then said, “Yeah, okay. Okay. But what should I do with him? Toss him in the bay or what? He’s pretty beat up, though. He’ll have marks all over him—”
Kane tried to move then, tried to squirm free. He had to do something. In response, the man pushed down harder on Kane’s chest. But he had to adjust his balance to compensate for Kane’s movement beneath his foot. As he did, the phone drifted away from his face by a few inches. It was enough for Kane to be able to hear the words that the man on the other end was speaking.
“No, we definitely need him. Everything depends on him. Let him go.”
The man caught his balance, returned the phone to his ear. The words were no longer audible to Kane.
“But what about her?” the man said. Anger lingered just below everything he said, everything he did.
The voice’s answer, whatever it was, was a short one. Kane didn’t hear the words. After they were spoken, the call was over.
The cell phone lid flipped shut then. The man returned it to his jacket pocket. His foot remained on Kane’s chest, the pressure still on, the weight of him still pressing down. Nothing happened for a while. Kane listened to the breathing, his own and the man’s. It was the only thing he could do. They were the only sounds in the room.
Then the foot rose from Kane’s chest again. Kane knew what was coming, braced himself against it. But the target wasn’t his chest this time. It was his head. Only Kane didn’t know that, couldn’t tell that in the darkness. The man’s foot came down once, then again, then one more time, fast, one right after another. By the time Kane recovered his senses, he was alone in the chapel, the door wide open, the man long gone.
It took a while for Kane to be able to stand. Five minutes, maybe ten. He was shaken deeply, he was hurt—his chest, his head,
his shoulder. When he did finally stand, he was even weaker, less on his feet than he had been when he had awakened in his bed six hours before. Enough light from outside was coming in for Kane to find his wallet and the Maglite. His wool cap had fallen off at some point. He found that, too. But the canvas bag was gone. And everything it contained. Gone.
Kane made his way to the door, made his way through it but didn’t bother to shut it behind him. He retraced his steps across the uneven ground. He didn’t care if anyone saw him now. He reached the gym, crossed Tuckahoe Road to the lacrosse field, made it from there to the science building. He walked slowly, stumbling at times, like a drunk. Each step he took jarred him, lit countless pains in him. He cut behind the library, through its long shadow, reached the Fine Arts building. Inside his office, he locked his door and sat at his desk, looking down at the black shoes. He knew he should take them off and dispose of them just as Gregor had told him to. Put them in a garbage bag, along with the gloves and the wool cap. Weight it down with a rock or two. Drive over the bridge that crosses the Shinnecock Canal, toss the bag out your window and into the water, and just keep on going. Kane remembered the words, remembered everything Gregor had told him. But his own sneakers were gone, were in the canvas bag with the camcorder and bolt cutter. And, anyway, he needed to sit first, to sit and think all this through, not that he had the first clue what the hell was going on, what it was he had now gotten himself into.
No, not what he had gotten himself into. What Mercer had gotten him into.
Kane looked at his phone. He wasn’t in any condition to talk to Mercer, not yet. He stayed in his chair for a long time. The pain was less if he kept still. Eventually he realized that he was bleeding from the back of his head. He had to move then. He dug some memos out of the trash can beside his desk, used them to clean up the blood and stop the bleeding. There was blood in his hair, he could feel it, and down the back of his shirt and jacket. He thought about going to the men’s room down the hall to get some paper towels and clean himself up, but he didn’t want to run into security. They’d be coming around anytime now, to get the art students out of the studios and lock up the building for the night.
Kane was behind his desk, holding a wad of paper to the back of his head, thinking again about calling Mercer. He needed at least to tell him what had happened, how everything had gone wrong. Someone needed to know, and Kane wasn’t about to call Clay or Gregor, not without figuring out first if this whole thing had been some kind of setup. He couldn’t trust anyone, maybe not even Mercer. Mercer was the one to put this whole thing in motion. But why would he do this to Kane? What reason would he have to want Kane to get beaten up like this? What in the world would Mercer gain from that?
Kane couldn’t make any sense of this, couldn’t even begin to see beyond the little that he knew. It was like he was back in the chapel again, unable to see even his own hand in front of his face. He was that lost, that much in the dark right now.
The one thing Kane did know was that he couldn’t go back to his apartment. He could be found there, by anyone, easily. But more than that, his lock was still broken. If someone came knocking, he couldn’t sit in the dark and pretend he wasn’t home till they went away. All they had to do was try the knob, open the door, and come on in. No safe feeling, that. Of course, he could barricade the door with his sofa, but the sofa wasn’t all that big, and anyway they’d know that he was inside by the fact that something had been laid across the door. No, the only safe place for him right now was his office. That door locked, was locked now, and soon the whole building would be shut tight by security. He’d wait here, all night if he had to, trying to think this through. But then what? He was used to turning to people. Whom could he turn to now?
He decided that he should probably turn off his office light. If security saw it, they’d be made curious by it, come to investigate. Didn’t they have master keys? That wouldn’t be good. How would he explain what he was doing there, why he was beat up. Half the guards were ex-cops, still had their cop ways about them. Kane didn’t want to deal with that, didn’t want to go down that road. He was about to turn off his light, about to lean forward and flip the wall switch and sit there in darkness, when he heard a knock on his door.
He froze. His first thought was that this had to be security. Who else would be in the Humanities wing of the Fine Arts building at eleven o’clock at night? But he would have heard the jingling of keys if it was them, he thought, would have heard footsteps coming down the empty hallway. The doors were thin, and the walls, too. And the knock would have been different, wouldn’t it? The knock would have been heavier, would have carried the clear and unmistakable sound of authority. The knock he had heard was soft, gentle, uncertain even. Whoever it was standing on the other side of his door had come up quietly, either doubted that Kane would really be inside at this time of night or didn’t want to be overheard by anyone else in the building.
Whatever the reason, Kane had no intention of answering. He sat still, holding his breath and looking at the door, waiting for the knock to repeat or for the sound of whoever it was out there to turn and start to walk away.
Nothing happened for several long seconds. Holding his breath like he was reminded Kane of the nightmare of near-suffocation he had experienced back at the chapel. What a horrible thing it was, he thought, to die like that. It wasn’t a thought he hadn’t had a thousand times before. He breathed out as softly as he could, then took air in. Shortly after that came another knock, three soft raps, a single knuckle on wood, almost delicate. It was barely audible. But this time the knocking was followed by a whisper, a low and raspy whisper, a whisper that Kane recognized quickly. A woman’s whisper.
“Hey, are you in there?” Colette Auster said.
Six
MILLER LOOKED OVER AT THE CLOCK ON THE TABLE BESIDE HIS bed, saw through the blue darkness of his room that it was just past eleven now. Abby had come by after work, they had eaten dinner together, then had gone up to his bedroom a little after nine. She was asleep now beside him, had found it quickly once they stopped kissing and lay still together. He was glad for that, that she had fallen asleep easily. He had turned the police scanner down so it wouldn’t bother her like it had the last time she was here. They’d only kissed tonight—she was tired from a long day, which was fine with him because he didn’t want her to see the violent bruise that covered his shoulder, didn’t want to have to explain how he had gotten it. Tonight during dinner she’d noticed the bump on the side of his head, which, he had told her, he had gotten at work today, knocking his head against a shelf in the back room. She had believed him—why wouldn’t she?—but he didn’t want to push his luck, not if he didn’t have to. Both injuries were on his left side, and his truck, which looked a little like it had been chewed up and spat out, was parked in front of her car in his driveway. She was a smart girl, he liked that most about her. There was a good chance that she would have put these things together and pressed him for the truth, and he didn’t want a showdown of any kind or degree, not tonight.
Miller hadn’t told her anything about what had happened, hadn’t told anyone but Clay when he had come by the night before to make sure Miller was okay and get the whole story. Clay had stayed for a while, told Miller to sit tight while he checked some things out, then left. Miller’s reason for not saying anything to Abby tonight was that he didn’t know for sure what had happened. Was the black Jetta just a drunk cutting him off? Or was it something more? A warning, or maybe something worse. There was no reason to burden Abby with it, any of it, at this point. But of course there was the other reason, the real reason, for keeping it from her. He wasn’t fooling himself one bit. The last thing he wanted was to give Abby a reason—another reason, like she’d need another—to bolt on him. He liked her, liked talking with her, liked lying beside her in the dark, the smell of her lingering in parts of his empty house after she had left. He’d gone without companionship long enough, had paid his debt, or so he thought. Though
it had only been twice so far that they had lain down together, it was enough to tell Miller that he was comfortable with her, and she with him. He knew enough about women to determine that much for himself. He wanted her around, didn’t want to say or admit anything that would put that at risk, so he kept it from her. He wasn’t all that happy about it, but there was nothing else he could do. And, anyway, it could have just been an accident. Clay was supposed to call him at work, let him know if he had found out anything to contradict that assumption. The call had never come.
Sleep didn’t find Miller as easily as it found Abby, not that he had expected it to. He lay there and looked at the ceiling from ten o’clock to eleven, when it became clear to him that there was something he could do, something that would maybe give him some answers. If getting run off the road was a warning, or an attempt on his life, then he had clearly touched a nerve over at the Water’s Edge. Maybe there was something he needed to know about that place that he didn’t know. He looked over at the clock again. Its digits glowed clear and red in the watery dark: 11:07. Only a few minutes had passed since he’d last looked at it. But those minutes had made all the difference. He had a purpose, a plan, an action to take. And following it wouldn’t require honoring the promise he had made to Clay to sit this out.
He didn’t want to disturb Abby, so he untangled himself from her limbs and got out of bed as carefully as he could. Under the heavy covers she stirred but didn’t awaken. He gathered his clothes and boots off the floor, stopped at his desk, and wrote her a quick note, telling her that he’d be back as soon as he could, that he was sorry about this but that it was important, and that he hoped she’d understand. If he was lucky, he’d be climbing in next to her without her even knowing that he had gone. All he needed was to have a conversation, find out what he could from the one person in the world he could absolutely trust. An hour, tops. It beat lying there, sleepless, thinking. He placed the note on his pillow, looked down at Abby for a moment, at her closed eyes and the soft brown hair that spread across her pillow like rivers drawn on a map. He thought about the summer to come—windows open, sheets cool in the night air, her hair brushing against him in the solemn dark. Would she still be here then, he wondered, still be coming around to see him? Would she love him by then? Would he have told her everything, would she have forgiven him?
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