“She’s not your wife any more, you idiot. She divorced you while you were incarcerated. Surely you know that.”
He waved the knife before her eyes like a hypnotist’s pendulum. She stared at it, gnawing her lip.
“Let’s be clear on one thing,” he said. “There was no divorce. I never consented to it.”
“It doesn’t matter whether you consented to it or not. In the eyes of the law, you’re divorced.”
“I am the law, Betty. Or have you forgotten?”
“Okay, Dexter,” she said. “You’re correct. I’d like to help you, I genuinely would. But can you first put away the knife, and free my arms and legs, please?”
“Don’t patronize me. It’s transparent and, frankly, coming from you, ridiculous.”
She lifted her chin defiantly. She was a proud woman and hated to be put in her place.
”Back to my first question.” He spun the knife around his fingers like a stage magician. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
He lowered the blade to her slender forearm. Punctured the skin with the knife’s tip.
“Please.” Breathing harder. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her in three years.”
“When did she leave?”
“About a year after you went to prison.”
“Why?”
“She wanted a fresh start.”
“A fresh start.” With my goddamn money.
“I truly don’t know where she’s gone,” Betty said. “She said...it wouldn’t be safe for me to know. Because of you.”
“Have you talked to her on the phone since she’s left?”
“No,” Betty said quickly. Too quickly.
He drew the blade down her forearm, opening another thin cut.
“It was earlier this year!” she cried. “On my seventieth birthday. She called me.”
“From where?”
“There was no number on Caller ID, and she knew better than to tell me where she was calling from, or to give me her number.”
“What did she say?”
“She said she was doing fine.” Betty sniffled. “She said that she loved me . . . and missed me something terrible.”
“I’m touched. But I’m not sure I believe you have no clue whatsoever about where she’s gone, or how to get in touch with her. No, I don’t believe that at all.”
Betty blinked away tears. “But I’ve told you the truth.”
“I know my wife. She adores you. She would never sever her ties with you and call only once a year.”
He surveyed the living room, the hallway, and the kitchen beyond.
“There has to be something,” he said.
“There’s nothing, I promise you.”
He detected an undercurrent of anxiety in her voice. He’d interrogated enough suspects to know the tone of a lie.
“Where’s your little black book?”
“Pardon?”
“Your address book, you old bitch. It’s a black, leatherbound book. I’ve seen it here before.”
“It’s in the study. Look on the desk, near the telephone.”
In the study, he found the book where she’d said it would be. It lay near a cordless phone and a stack of envelopes.
He flipped through the address book. Underneath his wife’s name, the last address listed was of their house in Chicago. The phone number was their old number, too.
He noticed the pile of envelopes beside the phone. Most of them were recent utility bills and bank statements, but one of the letters had been sent from Thad Harris, in St. Louis, Missouri. It had a postmark of December 11, one week ago.
The envelope had already been opened. Inside, he found a personal check written from Thad to Betty, in the amount of one thousand dollars.
He scrutinized the check like a bank teller suspicious of fraud. He found an entry for Thad in Betty’s address book. The phone number and address were the same as the information printed on the check.
Beside the stack of envelopes lay a faded checkbook. He paged to the registry. In her careful handwriting, Betty had entered a series of deposits, each in the amount of one thousand dollars, which she had notated every month for the past year.
He returned to the living room and waved the check in Betty’s face.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“What is it? I can’t read without my glasses. Since you’re so smart you must remember that about me.”
“It’s a payment from Thad Harris to you, for one grand,” he said. “I remember Thad. He worked with my wife at the salon in Chicago. He was a fag, but a good friend of hers. Why is he sending money to you every month?”
Betty’s gaze slipped away from him.
“He’s...he’s paying me back for a . . . for a loan I once gave him.”
He cut her—a quick, clean slash down the side of her face. She shrieked, and blood began to flow in bright rivulets.
“I appreciate honesty,” he said. “It’s a simple matter of respect, Betty.”
Betty’s lips worked, but no words came out. Blood trickled from the cut and into the corner of her mouth.
He picked up the cordless phone off the nearby end table. He settled on the coffee table in front of Betty again.
Betty watched him like a cornered animal.
“Listen up,” he said. “My wife has money that belongs to me, and I intend to get it by any means necessary. You’re going to help me.”
Betty spat out a stream of blood. Glared at him. Stubborn old broad.
“You’re going to call Thad,” he said. “You’re going to speak very calmly. You’re going to tell him that it’s urgent for you to get my wife’s address. Make up a story.”
“But he...he won’t have it. No one does.”
“She’s sending him money to give to you—he’ll have it. By the way, I’m quite sure it’s my money that she’s been forwarding to you. She ever told you where she gets it from?”
“I...I assume she works...”
“Doing hair? Or fucking? Those were about the only two things she could do with any skill at all.” He barked a laugh. “Whatever she’s doing, she’s not earning enough to give you a grand every month. She’s too goddamn stupid.”
Betty sobbed quietly, the tears tracking down her cheeks mingling with the blood.
He punched the number from the check into the handset. When the line rang, he placed the phone against Betty’s ear.
“Start talking,” he said.
Eyes burning, Betty waited. “It’s gone to voice mail.”
“Leave him a message. We’ll sit here together and wait for a call back.”
Glaring at him, Betty spoke into the handset: “Thad, it’s Aunt Betty. Tell Joy that I’ll always love her, dear ...and please, tell her to run for her life, because Dexter is out of prison and he’s here—”
He tore the phone away from her ear and killed the connection.
“You fucking bitch,” he said. “And I was thinking of letting you go easy.”
“I wouldn’t give you the pleasure.” She grinned at him, blood smearing her cheek and chin like war paint.
He pressed the blade against her throat. But the old woman, her frail body shaking, only looked up at him—and spat in his face.
He wiped the spittle off his jaw.
And then he started cutting in earnest.
16
Dexter is really out.
Thad Harris, a trusted friend from the life she had left behind, had called Rachel’s cell phone while she was cutting a client’s hair. He’d been hysterical. She had hurried to the back office to take the call.
Oh, my God, Joy, your Aunt Betty left me a message, I got it like a half hour ago and I’m calling you right away... Dexter is really out! He’s out of prison, and he’s with her, and she said she loves you and you’ve gotta run, Joy, you’ve gotta run . . .
Speaking with a calmness that masked her true emotions, she had urged Thad to be careful, thanked him for the call, and sai
d she had to go. She stared at the cell phone in her palm, chewing her bottom lip.
That past weekend, Thad had called her and said Aunt Betty had discovered a story in the newspaper: a van transporting Dexter to another prison had mysteriously gone missing. She wanted to believe that the van had crashed somewhere—hopefully leaving Dexter mortally injured— but fear had nonetheless set in, nibbling away at her thoughts, invading her dreams.
His escape was the worst thing that ever could have happened, for all of them.
Fingers trembling, she called Aunt Betty’s house, first punching in a code to conceal her number from Caller ID.
The phone rang once...twice... and before the third ring there was a click and a pause, as if the call had been forwarded.
She swallowed. Something about this didn’t feel right.
On the fourth ring, someone picked up the line, but did not speak. A car engine grumbled in the background.
She licked her dry lips and softly said, “Hello?”
“I knew you would call,” Dexter said in his distinctive gravelly baritone. “You sound as sexy as ever, frightened, though. Why would that be?”
A lump as big as a lemon seemed to have gotten stuck in her throat, keeping her from speaking, making it almost impossible for her to even draw breath.
“I’m your husband, after all,” he said. “Till death do us part. In sickness and health. For richer or poorer. Locked down or free.”
She was gripping the phone so tightly that her knuckles were bleached of color.
“You’d have no reason to be afraid of me,” he said, “unless you’ve done something that you knew would make me angry, now would you?”
She wanted to hang up, but her fingers were locked around the handset, and wouldn’t obey.
“Everyone who helped you get away, everyone you love— I’m taking them away, and I think you know I don’t sell no wolf tickets, baby.”
She opened her mouth, whether to scream or curse at him she didn’t know, and it didn’t matter, for no sound came out.
DON’T EVER TELL 99 “And I think you know exactly why I’m doing it.”
Tears tracked down her cheeks, curved along her chin, plopped onto the desk.
“When I find you—and I will, and you know it—you better have my money, every last fucking dollar.”
Click.
She sat still, phone mashed to her ear as if glued, the dial tone drilling through her skull.
Gripped by a sudden wave of nausea that broke her paralysis, she bolted out of the chair, raced to the bathroom, flipped up the toilet lid, and vomited so violently into the bowl it felt as though her stomach lining had torn loose.
None of the other stylists came to check on her. The music playing out front, and the chattering women hard at work on hair would have drowned out any noises from back there.
Breathing hard, she straightened. At the sink, she removed her glasses and washed her face with cold water, rinsed out her mouth, and then blotted her skin dry with a paper towel.
Her eyes were red and puffy. She hadn’t realized she was crying.
Aunt Betty, oh God...
She choked down the bitter grief that surged up her throat, and forced herself to return to the computer at her desk. She accessed the Internet, found the number for the Zion Police Department, and called from her cell.
In a slow, but steady, voice, she resisted giving the dispatcher her name, but informed them that Dexter Bates had broken into her aunt’s house and committed a violent crime. She supplied a detailed physical description of Dexter. She even gave them his inmate number, reading it from the profile she’d printed off the Illinois Department of Corrections Web site—a step she’d taken last night just in case her deepest fears came true.
The dispatcher promised to send officers to her aunt’s house immediately. She hung up and rocked in her chair, hugging herself tightly, as if to keep grief from blowing her to pieces.
God, why Aunt Betty?
She tossed her glasses onto the desk and pressed her fingertips against her eyelids, to block the flow of tears.
Her cell phone rang, playing the ring tone she had assigned to Joshua: “Always Be My Baby” by Mariah Carey.
The doctor’s appointment. He was probably calling her to confirm that she was meeting him.
She paused... and then let the call go to voice mail.
I’m so sorry, Josh.
She touched her abdomen. She imagined the as-yetunformed heart of their child beating softly inside of her. Justin.
I’m sorry, but I’ve got to protect our baby.
Sniffling, she wiped her eyes and rose from the chair.
It was time for her contingency plan.
Parked outside the doctor’s office, Joshua attempted again to reach Rachel on her cell. It was a quarter past two, and not only was she late for her appointment, she wasn’t answering her phone, either.
Was she stuck in traffic and having cell issues? Or had she lied to him again?
Until lately, he never would have considered the latter possibility, and it disturbed him to harbor such doubts about her. But he couldn’t help it. Her recent behavior had been suspect.
He passed the next few minutes tapping the steering wheel and listening to Christmas music on the radio. Stevie Wonder was singing, “Someday at Christmas,” one of Joshua’s favorite holiday tunes, but the song failed to cheer him.
Something was wrong.
He called Rachel’s cell again. Again, he got her voice mail.
Finally he called the salon. One of the stylists told him that Rachel had left a short while ago for a personal appointment.
He twisted the radio knob to a station that continuously broadcasted traffic news. In a city such as Atlanta where people drove like bandits, you never could discount the possibility that someone running late hadn’t gotten delayed in a ten-car pileup somewhere.
But there were no traffic snarls on the south side.
He went inside the doctor’s office, identified himself to the receptionist, and asked if Rachel had called to say she was going to be late, or had requested to reschedule. The receptionist was a young black woman with a dried-out Jhericurl. She eyed him up and down in that appraising manner that black women often did, shook her head, and told him to advise his wife that she would have to pay a twenty-five dollar fee for missing her appointment without giving twentyfour-hours’ advance notice.
“Right, I’ll be sure to let her know.”
Back in his Explorer, he called their house, on the remote chance that Rachel would be home. Surprisingly, she picked up on the third ring.
“Hey, baby.” Her voice was subdued, as if she had been asleep.
“Rachel, I’ve been here at the doctor’s office for almost half an hour waiting for you. What happened?”
There was a long pause.
“Please... come home,” she said. “I need to see you.”
“You don’t sound good. Is everything okay?”
“Come home. Please.” Her voice nearly broke on the word, “please.”
“I’m on my way.”
At home, he found Rachel on the sofa in the family room. Coco lay curled on her lap, slumbering.
Rachel smiled wanly. She wore a red terry cloth bathrobe, her legs folded beneath her, Indian style. A box of Kleenex stood on an end table; crumpled tissues lay on the table, and one was bunched in her lap.
“You’ve been crying,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
She gently placed Coco on the floor, rose off the couch, and came to him.
“Hold me,” she said.
He held her. She was freshly bathed, the lemony fragrance of her body wash filling his nostrils. Her still-moist skin dampened the front of his shirt.
But when he felt her trembling, and heard her stifled sob, he realized that her tears, not bath water, were saturating him.
“Baby, what is it?” he asked. “Please, tell me.”
She tilted her head backward, looked up at him.
Tears shimmered in her eyes—eyes that held secrets and pain.
A horrifying thought came to him, something so awful he was afraid to put it into words. But he needed to know. “Is there something wrong with... our baby?”
She shook her head. Wiped her eyes.
Some of the tension drained out of him. “What is it then?”
“Upstairs.” She slipped out of his embrace and went to the staircase, her robe billowing around her legs. Coco scampered after her.
“Rachel? Come back and talk to me. Please.”
She disappeared upstairs.
He followed her. She was in their bedroom, standing at the double-windows that overlooked the dense, winterpeeled woodlands beyond the back of their house.
She had dropped her robe to the carpet; she was nude. In the blend of gray afternoon light and shadows, her rear profile was like a luscious illusion.
He felt a stirring in his jeans. With all of the questions circling his thoughts, this was hardly the right time for sex, but his body apparently had other ideas.
“Do you love me?” she whispered, her back to him.
“Of course, I love you. I’ll always love you.”
“Will you?” She looked over her shoulder.
“Come on, girl.” He sat on the bed, almost squashing Coco; the tiny dog scrambled off the mattress and darted into her pet kennel on the nightstand. “I don’t understand why you’re acting like this. What brought all this on?”
“I love you, too.” She moved away from the windows and in front of him. He felt heat radiating from her body, as if she was burning up with some inner flame. “I’ll always love you...no matter what happens.”
No matter what happens.
The words, ominous and mysterious, made him open his mouth to ask what she meant. But she put a hold on his questions by pressing her fingers to his lips, buttoning them shut.
DON’T EVER TELL 105 Then she took one of his hands and placed it on her hip, as though offering her body to him.
His fingers lay against a long, faded scar that curved from her lower abdomen to her hip. She bore similar scars across her shoulders, and on her back. They looked as if they had been made with a sharp blade.
When he’d once asked her about them, she told him she had gotten them from an old accident, and then promptly changed the subject.
As if aware of his inspection, she cupped the back of his head and pulled him forward. His lips brushed against her stomach.
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