Joe Schreiber - Chasing The Dead (mobi)

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  “Wait.”

  “I gave you clear instructions. All you’ve done is disappoint me.”

  “Please—”

  “Listen closely now, because you’re about to hear me slit your baby’s throat.”

  “No!”

  “Too late, Susan.”

  “Stop it!” She jerks straight upright in the front seat, both hands clutching helplessly at the phone as if she could somehow reach through and rescue Veda, and her coat flap catches on her left sleeve. As the edge of the coat flips up, its outer pocket tips sideways and her keys spill out along with her gloves, bouncing off her knee and falling to the floor.

  You put them in your pocket. That’s where they were the whole time, stuffed between your gloves where you couldn’t hear them jingling.

  “Wait!” she shouts, ramming her hand down below her feet, fingers probing, encountering the little metal ridges hooked to the reassuring weight of the clicker, right there in her palm. “I have them! They were in my pocket! I have them!”

  She slips the key into the ignition, the dashboard brightening obediently in front of her.

  “Hello?” she says. “Are you there? Can you hear me?”

  She listens. For an eternity, nothing. Then:

  “Do you have everything else?” he asks.

  She thinks of the canvas tarp, and the shovel for that matter, which ended up somewhere in the side yard when she fell on her face. But there is no margin for error, she judges, not now, perhaps not ever again. “Yes,” she lies smoothly.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  There is a pause long enough that she has to wrestle to control her trembling for fear that he can hear it in her respiration. Despite the cold she can feel a droplet of sweat leaking from her right armpit down her ribs. “All right, then.” He sounds convinced, or wants her to think that he is. Either way it is no longer of any consequence. “Start the car and head east toward Route 2. Get off on 23 and look for the sign for Everett Road. When you get there you’re going to head north. I’ll call you again when you get there. And remember, Susan.”

  “What?”

  “You have a job to do. I’ll be watching you. If you make any unauthorized stops to ask for help or use a pay phone, I will cut your little girl up and send you the pieces. Do you believe me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. We’ll be in touch.”

  “When will you—”

  Click.He’s gone.

  7:58P.M.

  For the first few minutes, she just drives. She does not permit herself to think. Not about Marilyn, not about the voice, and most of all, not about Veda. Not yet.

  Traffic is still heavy on Route 2 but at least it’s moving. People are getting back to their homes, settling in for the evening, switching on the TV, perhaps pouring themselves a glass of wine. For those unfortunate enough to be on the road, the first few white flakes are starting to sift down, bouncing off her windshield as she heads north. Eventually she gets off on Everett Road, two lanes of nothing much at all.

  Her mind drifts slightly. It is not advisable, this drifting, but there it is.

  She cannot help but think what it would be like if Phillip were here.

  The temptation to try to call him, to grab the phone and punch in the West Coast number he left on her machine a year or so ago, six months after stepping permanently out of her life, is far stronger than any urge to call the police. Sue does not have much faith in the police. She doesn’t exactly have a whole lot of faith in Phillip, either—what can you say about a man who abandons his wife and one-month-old daughter, even if he leaves them with a yacht, anArchitectural Digest home, and full ownership of the third largest real estate office in Boston?

  Abandoned is abandoned, as her friend Natalie is fond of saying, and scum is scum. Of course Natalie always sounds a little envious when she says this, like she wouldn’t mind finding out firsthand what it’s like being abandoned with a big house and millions of dollars to spend, but Sue is not even remotely deluded about the emotional fallout of Phillip’s disappearance. She knows that Veda will grow up without a father, nothing more than a tall, narrow-shouldered shadow with graying hair leaning over her bassinet on the videotape that Sue has no intention of ever allowing her daughter to watch.

  But the fact is that Phillip Chamberlain has been a part of her life for almost as far back as Sue can remember. In elementary school back in their hometown of Gray Haven, Massachusetts, they were the two classic pillars upon which the caste system rested: Nerd Boy and Fat Girl. They’ve been through the shit together. By tenth grade Sue thinned out and sprouted breasts, and the big lips that had once been the object of such unimaginative scorn were regarded with admiration, jealousy, and flat-out lust. Meanwhile it was obvious to everyone that the reason Phillip didn’t give a rat’s ass what anybody thought was because he was smart enough to do whatever he wanted. And the first thing he wanted was to get out of Gray Haven.

  But even after he started getting scholarship offers to Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford, and she was turning down dates from quarterbacks, the glue between them—the intractable outsiders’ bond—had only grown stronger. They tried being boyfriend and girlfriend for a while, even made out a few times in the backseat of Phillip’s Toyota—it seemed like Extreme’s “More Than Words” was always playing on the stereo—but it was always easier being friends.

  With that in mind, somebody once remarked (was it Phillip himself?) that their eventual marriage was built more on inevitability than any sort of romance or even affection. Certainly therewas plenty of affection too, maybe even a little steamy romance in their backseat mash sessions. But more than anything there was just the sense of having been there for each other during a particularly awful period of their lives, a moment so horrible that you needed to share it with somebody or else it would destroy you.

  After high school there was a ten-year-plus lull when they rarely saw each other. Phillip graduated from Harvard and began buying apartment buildings around town, little ones and then big ones. Sue dropped out of college and started driving an ambulance for a living, a job she found just crazy enough to temporarily satisfy the chaos-addict that she’d discovered lurking inside herself. Throughout the nineties they kept in touch via phone calls, Christmas cards, and e-mails, along with that occasional moment of ESP when she was sure that he was thinking about her at the same moment she was thinking about him. She worked maniacal hours, dated the usual string of police-scanner geeks and buzz-cut paramedics, went to bars, took drugs, and woke up in too many different places without knowing exactly where her clothes were.

  That period of her life had bottomed out on one Fourth of July weekend on the night she tried to drive home from Singing Beach, blind drunk, to the vacation condo she was renting in Beverly Farms. Despite the fact that the road refused to hold still, ambulance-driver bravado carried the day and she was sure she could make it, right up to the moment her old Jeep Wrangler left the road and rolled over three times before hitting a tree. Sue spent six hours in the OR but made it out alive, scared, scarred, and sober. It was all veryBehind the Music, but no less effective for all of that, a reminder that when life wants to get our attention it doesn’t bother with half-measures. Eight months later she ran into Phillip at a Super Bowl party at a mutual friend’s house. They ended up back at his brownstone on Beacon Hill, where he said nothing about the scars running up her abdomen and cleaving her right nipple in half, but only kissed her and held her in his arms. And Sue would be lying if she didn’t admit, at least to herself, that the first emotion that she felt was a sense of relief, of finally being home.

  Six months later she was pregnant with Veda. The sensible thing, Phillip said, was to get married so Sue could quit her job and they could get busy taking vacations, spending the money he was making, and spoiling their kid. Sue surprised herself by saying okay. That was a little over two years ago, when they were
both in their early thirties. He was already running a multimillion-dollar real estate business out of his office in Cambridge, holding business meetings by cell phone from his Boston Whaler, or telecommuting from his house on Nantucket—all of which, upon edict from Phillip’s lawyers, now belongs to Sue. Phillip has seen to that, shifting ownership of everything to Sue in the seemingly endless jet stream of phone calls, e-mails, legal documents, and bank transfers sweeping out of Malibu over the first twelve months immediately following his departure. Throughout this last summer communications between them dwindled to a trickle, as the last loose ends were tied up, everything going into Sue’s name. She hasn’t heard from him at all since September, not even a Christmas card. And though he is scum for leaving, she can’t help but think that having him here might somehow reassure her that she isn’t losing her mind.

  The notion evaporates, and she is just driving again. After a moment she tastes salt.

  She realizes that she is thinking about Veda, and weeping.

  And just like that, the phone is in her hand.

  It occurs to her that the man’s threat of listening in on her calls could be a bluff, but probably not. After all, she owns a baby monitor, and she’s been on her cell phone and heard snatches of her own conversation crackling through Veda’s bedroom enough times that she doesn’t even use the cell inside the house when her daughter is upstairs napping. And the paramedics and ham radio operators that she’s dated used to entertain themselves for hours listening in on other people’s calls, miles away. It not onlycould happen; it happened all the time.

  Then you have to assume that he is listening. All the time.

  But in the silent emptiness of the wooded road around her, the thought of calling Phillip refuses to go away. What if she were to call him and havehim call the police, using some kind of code that Veda’s abductor might not recognize, and then hang up? She already knows what she could say, the phrase that would send up a red flag for him, without alerting the man on the phone what she was talking about.

  She picks up the phone.

  Don’t be stupid. Is it really worth risking Veda’s life for this?

  What if she doesn’t say a word? She could just dial his number. He’d see it on his caller ID, and—

  Then she sees them, a half mile back.

  Headlights.

  I’m watching you.

  They’re coming up fast, too fast, swooping to narrow the distance between them in what seems like a split second, already close enough to drag her shadow upward across the dashboard.

  Sue shoves the phone down between the seats as the headlights swallow her. She can hear the engine, an irregularBLAT BLAT BLAT that sounds more like a single-engine plane than a car. Now it is alongside her, and she sees it’s a truck, actually, but the driver’s face is obscured as it plows past her and swings up in front, cutting her off.

  Sue hits the brakes, dropping back, tasting a sudden reflux of fear. Brake lights flare in front of her, forcing her to slow even more. Her tires squeal; the seat belt catches her hard and makes her sternum ache. The box containing the steamed lobsters tips up on its side and she hears them flop over sideways with a thump. Up ahead of her, twenty feet away, the truck has come to a complete stop, its engine throbbing. It is one of those old no-color farm pickups with rounded corners, a great grinning grille, and something boisterously wrong with its muffler.

  She can feel the driver’s eyes gleaming in his sideview mirror, reflected back at her in the volcanic-black darkness. Examining her face.

  Then she can’t move.

  Sherecognizes this truck. She’s seen it before. Now that it’s right in front of her, she’s almost positive that it’s the same one that—

  The phone rings.

  8:18P.M.

  “Hello?”

  “Susan.”

  “I’m…please, I’m sorry. I slipped. It was a mistake.”

  “Susan.”

  “Don’t hurt her. Do whatever you want to me. I’m sorry. I swear it won’t happen again. Just please—”

  “Susan.”

  Her teeth snap shut. She closes her eyes. She cannot bear the moist optic glimmer that she senses coming from the pickup’s eccentrically tooled sideview mirrors, those dark eyes shining like tumors from their rusty chrome sockets.

  The driver’s side door opens and a man steps out. His face is lost in the darkness, but she can tell from the angle of his head and shoulders that he’s looking straight at her. Snowflakes spill through the headlights aiming off into the woods.

  Holding the phone very close to her ear, Sue says, “Please. Please don’t hurt her.”

  For a moment the man doesn’t move. He seems to be watching her even more closely, as if trying to make a decision about something. Then he gets back up behind the wheel and slams the door.

  “Thank you,” she says. “Thank you so m—”

  The truck spins its tires and lurches back into motion, its motor pounding off down the highway in a steadily diminishing array of asymmetric taillights. It leaves her there clutching the phone, not sure whether the voice is still with her or not. In the silence she realizes she can hear him breathing.

  “You’ve made it this far,” the voice says. “But so far it’s been relatively easy. What you’re going to do next isn’t going to be nearly so easy. But I know you can do it, Susan.” And does he actually chuckle? “I have faith in you.”

  She waits. He does not make her wait long.

  “You’re familiar with Route 114, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “It runs east and west, right along the state line. If you follow it far enough to the east it takes you out to the coast. But you’re going to start out by taking it west. Back to a little town called Gray Haven. You do know Gray Haven, don’t you, Susan?”

  “Of course.” Her voice feels detached from her, like something recorded a long time ago and played back. It doesn’t sound like her at all. “I grew up there.”

  “That’s right, Susan. You grew up there. In fact, you left something behind and tonight, you’re going to get it back.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,”he mimics cruelly, and it seems like he should be laughing, but he’s not. There is no hint of humor, not even sarcasm, in his voice. It’s like before, when it turned nasty, but this is much, much worse. “You listen to me, you worthless little cunt, because I’m only going to say this once. The only thing you’re doing when you play dumb is putting this knife closer to little Veda’s throat. Now, do you know what I’m talking about?”

  There’s another pause, Sue leaning forward into the phone, and in the background, horribly, she can hear Veda again, starting to cry in a shrill wail. It is not a cry of fear now, but unquestionably a cry of pain.

  “Wait, please, stop!” Sue shouts, tears in her eyes again, voice going to pieces. “I’ll do whatever you want! Just please don’t hurt her anymore!”

  He doesn’t answer her and she’s left with the sound of Veda crying louder. Sue feels the abrupt soreness in her breasts and the left cup of her bra is wet with milk from her undamaged left nipple, the left breast being the only one able to produce milk for Veda after the accident. She hasn’t nursed her daughter in almost six months but her body doesn’t seem to care about this. Sue is still crying too, unable to control herself, and the next voice she hears isn’t the man on the phone at all. It’s Phillip’s voice, in her head, calm and clear and in its way almost as real as the one coming through the cell phone.

  Stop it, Sue. Just stop it, right now.

  She catches her breath. In spite of everything, she’s startled into silence at how vividly she can hear him.

  This is bad. It’s the worst. But nothing’s ever been solved with tears. So just…stop…crying.

  “All right,” she whispers. Not whimpers, just whispers. And in a moment she has nearly regained the fullness of her voice. Through the receiver she can he
ar her daughter still crying, but she’s calmed down a bit too, thank God, and it sounds as if whatever the man on the other end was doing to her has stopped, at least for now. Maybe he was just pinching her, she thinks. Maybe not even that. If Marilyn really is there, maybe she was somehow able to protect Veda. Or comfort her. Marilyn would do anything for Veda, Sue knows, putting her own life on the line for Veda if that is what it takes.

  At least this is what she chooses to believe, for this very moment at hand, and if it gets her through to the next moment, then she may continue to believe it.

  “A long time ago,” the voice on the phone says, “you and your friend did something that neither one of you will ever forget. You do know who I’m talking about, Susan. You know very well.”

  Sue Young sits perfectly still like a figure in a snow globe, amid the increasing chaos of tumbling white, staring out the windshield at the bare trees along the road, a dense thicket of questions tightening around her like some kind of barbwire shroud.