by Blake Crouch
So Luther sets the tape recorder on a nearby dresser and presses record. Then he thumbs back the hammer on the .357 and strokes the light switch with his latex finger though he does not flip it yet.
Zach Worthington shifts in bed.
“Theresa,” he mumbles. “Trese?”
A half-conscious answer: “Wha?”
Luther’s loins tingle.
“I think one of the kids are up.”
13
ELIZABETH Lancing couldn’t sleep. She’d gone on her first date with Todd Ramsey tonight and a spectrum of emotions swarmed inside her head, giddiness to guilt. Todd had taken her to a French restaurant in Charlotte called The Melting Pot. Initially she’d been horrified at the prospect of making conversation over three hours of fondue but Todd was charming and they’d fallen into easy conversation.
They started out discussing their law firm where Todd had just made partner and Beth had been a legal administrator for five years. At first they resisted the gossip but Womble & Sloop was a rowdy firm and the fodder was bottomless and irresistible. This transitioned into a brief exchange on their philosophies of employment and how neither of them knew anyone whose work afforded absolute fulfillment. They posited finally that the ideal job did exist but that finding it was such an excruciating chore most people preferred instead to suffer moderate unhappiness over an entire career.
Toward the end of dinner, as they dipped melon balls and strawberries into a pot of scalding chocolate, the conversation took an intimate turn. They sat close, basked in prolonged eye contact, and compared only the idyllic slivers of their childhoods.
Beth knew that Todd had been recently divorced. He was well aware that her husband had disappeared seven years ago through some mysterious connection to Andrew Thomas. But neither came within a hundred miles of the other’s baggage.
After dinner Todd took her home. It was eleven o’clock and cruising north up a vacated I-77, Beth watched the pavement pass, mesmeric in the headlights. Riding with Todd she felt foreign to herself in a fresh and frightening way. Like the start of college and autumn. Not a thirty-eight-year-old single mother of two.
She came very near to holding his hand.
She wanted to.
Had he reached out she would not have pulled away.
But the part of her that had lived eleven years with another man and bore his children and experienced the loss of him quietly objected. So she kept her hands flat against her newly-purchased sleek black A-line, partly out of fear, mostly out of respect, thinking, Next time perhaps but not tonight Walter.
Now Beth had climbed out of bed and come downstairs where she stood at the kitchen sink looking through the window at the black waters of Lake Norman, the moon high and lambent, an ivory sun in a navy sky.
The lake was no longer smooth. An easy wind had put ripples through that black plate of water and disturbed the reflection of the moon. Beth could hear the fluttering leaves and see them spiraling down out of sleeping trees into the frosting grass.
Next door, the Worthingtons’ rope swing had begun to sway—some wayward specter revisiting a childhood haunt at this wee hour of the morning.
The clock on the stove read 1:39.
She took a glass from the cabinet and filled it from a bottle of water. Following those wonderful glasses of shiraz that had accompanied her supper, she was parched and downed the glass in one long gulp.
Instead of returning to bed, Beth walked through the dining room into the den and curled up on the sofa beneath an afghan. She wasn’t remotely tired and this exacerbated her realization that it was now Monday and she would be staggering into work in six short hours.
Moonlight streamed through the French doors leading out onto the deck where the shadows cast by Adirondack chairs lengthened as the moon moved across the sky.
She wore an old satin teddy Walter had given her years ago for Valentine’s Day. Because all the lights were off downstairs, when she crinkled the fabric the blue crackling of static electricity was visible as it danced in the satin.
She ruminated on Walter. He was more vivid in her mind than he’d been in a long while. What she felt toward him wasn’t sadness or nostalgia or even love. It was beyond an emotion she could name. She thought of him now as light and time and energy—a being her earthbound soul could not begin to comprehend. Did he watch her now? she wondered. From some unfathomable dimension? She had the warmest inkling they would meet again as pure souls in the space between stars. They would communicate their essences to one another and luminously merge, becoming a single brilliant entity. This was her afterlife, to be with him again in some inconceivable form.
Beth heard the footfalls of one of her children upstairs. Rising from the sofa, she walked into the foyer, the hardwood floor cool, dusty beneath her bare feet. She climbed the carpeted staircase to the second floor and upon nearing the top felt the insomnia begin to abate and her eyes grow leaden. She was tired of thinking. Perhaps she would sleep now.
The stairs bisected the second floor hallway.
To her left the corridor extended past two linen closets and Jenna’s bedroom and terminated at the closed door of the bathroom, behind which John David urinated hard into the toilet.
Beth went right toward her bedroom at the opposite end of the hall. Passing another pair of closets and the playroom, she approached the open doorway of John David’s bedroom. Before leaving on her date with Todd she’d made J.D. promise to clean it up.
She stopped at his doorway and peeked inside. Though it was dark, she could see that the floor was still buried in clothes and toys. J.D. and Jenna had been playing Risk since they came home from church. The game board rested at the foot of the bed, framed by dirty blue jeans.
Beth drew a sudden breath.
John David was sleeping in his bed.
She heard the bathroom door creak open.
Turning, she looked down the corridor.
With the bathroom light now switched off she could only see the silhouette of a tall dark form standing in the bathroom doorway.
So it was Jenna in there.
“Hey, sweetie,” Beth called out, her voice betraying scraps of doubt.
The form at the other end of the hallway did not move or respond.
“Jenna? What’s wrong, Jenna?”
Beth’s heart thudded against her sternum.
Behind her John David mumbled incoherently. She closed the door to his bedroom, a salty metallic taste coating her throat with the flavor of adrenaline and dread.
She was ten steps from her bedroom door.
Gun in closet. Top shelf. Nike shoebox. Think it’s loaded.
Stepping out into the middle of the hall, she began to backpedal slowly toward her room, squinting through the darkness at the motionless shadow, thinking, I haven’t fired that gun in seven years. I don’t know if I remember how.
Her hand grasped the doorknob. She turned it, backing through the threshold into the master bedroom.
The shadow remained at the other end of the hall.
Phone or gun?
She could scarcely catch a sufficient breath. Some part of her wondered, prayed that this was a recurrence of one of those awful dreams she’d suffered in the wake of Walter’s death.
Much as she hated to let that thing out of her sight she was impotent without a weapon. Beth turned and moved deftly to the bedside table. She lifted the phone. Jesus, no. The line was dead and her cell phone was downstairs in her purse.
Beth slid back the door to the closet as the unmistakable resonance of thick-soled bootsteps filled the hallway.
She hyperventilated.
Do not faint.
Standing on her tiptoes, Beth reached for the top shelf and grabbed the shoebox with her fingertips and pried it open. It contained a box of bullets but the .38 was gone. She noticed other boxes on the floor at her feet—he’d been rummaging while she was downstairs.
The footsteps stopped.
The house was silent.
A wave of trembles swept through her, sapping the strength from her legs, forcing her to the floor. The thought of her children stood her up again and she walked to the doorway of her bedroom and peered down the hall.
It was empty now.
“I’ve called nine-one-one on my cell phone!” she yelled. “And I’m holding a shotgun and I’m not afraid to use it!”
“Mom?” Jenna called out.
“Jenna!” Beth screamed.
In a knee-length flannel nightgown her daughter stepped from her bedroom into the hallway. Jenna was taller than Beth now, prettier. She’d inherited her daddy’s good looks and athleticism, missed her mother’s plainness.
“Why are you yelling, Mom?”
“Get back in your room and lock the door!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Now, goddammit!”
Jenna ran crying into her room and slammed the door.
“I don’t want to shoot you but I will,” Beth hollered at the darkness.
“How can you shoot me when I have your gun?” a calm masculine voice inquired.
The shadow emerged from the playroom and walked toward her.
Beth flicked the light switch on the wall.
The hallway lit up, burning her eyes and flooding the shadow with color and texture.
The man who approached her had long black hair, a face whiter than a china doll, and smiling red lips. He tracked bootprints of blood across her hardwood floor. It speckled his face, darkened his jeans and long-sleeved black T-shirt.
Beth sank down onto the floor, immobilized with terror.
Luther came and stood over her, said, “I haven’t hurt your children and I won’t long as you’re compliant.”
Beth saw the ivory hilted knife in his right hand. It had seen use tonight.
Jenna’s door opened. The young girl poked her head out.
“I’m all right, baby,” Beth said, her voice breaking. “Stay in your room.”
Luther turned and gazed at the teenager.
“Obey your mother.”
“Why are you doing this?” Jenna cried.
“Get in your room!” Beth yelled.
“What is happening?”
“Get in your room!”
Jenna’s door slammed and locked.
When Beth looked back up at the intruder she saw he’d traded his knife for a blackjack.
“Turn around,” he said. “I need to see the back of your head.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to hit you with this and I’d rather it didn’t smash your face.”
“Don’t you touch my children.”
“Turn your head.”
“Swear to me you won’t hurt—”
Luther seized her by the hair and whacked the back of her skull.
14
ACCORDING to the official website www.wafflehouse.com, the thirteen hundred Waffle Houses in the United States collectively serve enough Jimmy Dean sausage patties in twenty-four hours to construct a cylinder of meat as tall as the Empire State Building. And in one year they serve enough strips of Bryan bacon to stretch from Atlanta to Los Angeles seven times.
Luther recalls these amusing factoids while cruising down the offramp of I-40, exit 151, in the city of Statesville, North Carolina. Though it’s 4:13 a.m., two establishments remain open for business. There’s the never-closing Super Wal-Mart on his side of the underpass and the wonderful Waffle House—just a left turn at the stoplight and two hundred yards up the street. Its lucent yellow sign cheerfully beckons him. He smiles. He hasn’t enjoyed that smoke-sated ambience in awhile.
Luther pulls into a parking space and turns off the ’85 Impala. In addition to stinking of onions, the car has been running hot and he worries it won’t endure the remainder of his journey. With respect to his sleeping cargo, breaking down would be an unthinkable disaster.
Intricately patterned frost has crystallized on the windshield of the car beside his, a web of lacy ice spreading across the glass. Touching the fragile crystals, he shivers and takes in the predawn stillness of the town. From where he stands the world consists of motels, gas stations, fast food restaurants, the drone of the interstate, and the sprawling glowing immensity of that Super Wal-Mart in the distance, set up on a hill so that it looks down upon its town with all the foreboding of a medieval stronghold.
Luther heads first into the bathroom. Though his work clothes rest safely in a trash bag in the backseat, he hasn’t had the opportunity to wash up. His hands and face are bloodspattered and he watches the water turn pink and swirl down the drain.
Even at this hour of the morning, Waffle House is buzzing, the bright light from the huge hanging globes bouncing off a murky cloud of cigarette smoke. The grill sizzles on without respite, the smell of the place a potpourri of stale coffee, smoke, and recycled grease.
A waitress moseys over to Luther’s booth.
“Know what you want, sweetie-pie?”
Though still perusing the illustrated menu he knows exactly what he wants.
“Vanilla Coca-Cola. Sausage. Bacon. Grits. Scrambled Eggs. A stack of pancakes. And more maple syrup. I’m going to use a lot more than what’s in that dispenser.”
The waitress chuckles. “We don’t serve pancakes.”
Luther glances up from the menu.
“Is that a joke?”
“Umm, this is the Waffle House. We serve waffles.”
She’s being friendly, flirtatious even, but Luther doesn’t catch this. He feels only humiliation. The waitress is a young thing. Very pregnant. He thinks that she might be pretty if her teeth weren’t crooked. Her nametag reads Brianna.
“I hate waffles, Brianna.”
“Well, there’s other stuff than that, darlin’. Fr-instance, my favorite thing is the hashbrowns. If you get em’ triple scattered all the way you never had anything so good.”
“All right.”
“So you want to try it?”
“All right.”
“And you still want all that other stuff, too?”
“Yes.”
When Brianna the waitress is gone, Luther leans back against the orange-cushioned booth. He tries not to dwell on how severely disappointed he is that the Waffle House doesn’t serve pancakes. How did he miss that? The waitress probably thinks he’s stupid now. Perhaps she should join the others in the trunk.
Numerous signs adorn the walls. While he waits for his Coke he reads them:
Cheese ‘N Eggs: A Waffle House Specialty
You Had a Choice and You Chose Us. Thank you.
Bert’s Chili: Our Exclusive Recipe
America’s Best Coffee
By the time his food arrives the first inkling of dawn is diffusing through the starfilled sky.
“You tell me how you like them hashbrowns,” Brianna says. “Pancakes, that’s a good one.”
The triple scattered all the way hashbrowns taste like nothing Luther has ever eaten. The bed of shredded fried potatoes is covered in melted cheese, onions, chunks of hickory-smoked ham, Bert’s chili, diced tomatoes, and slices of jalapeno peppers. He likes it better than pancakes and when Brianna brings him a refill of vanilla Coke he thanks her for the recommendation. No longer is he ashamed for ordering pancakes in a restaurant specifically called Waffle House.
Luther sips the vanilla Coke, briefly at peace, watching the sky revive through the fingerprinted glass.
Things are progressing famously.
How could the kidnapping of both Karen Prescott and Elizabeth Lancing not grab Andrew’s attention, wherever he is hiding?
As he starts to leave Luther notices a man of sixty-five or seventy facing him two booths down, his sallow face frosted with white stubble, eyes bloodshot and sinking, staring absently out the window, a cigarette burning in his hand.
There is a transfer truck parked outside and based on the man’s J.R. Trucking hat and hygienic disrepair Luther assumes he’s the truck driver.
He senses the man’s loneliness.
&nb
sp; “Good morning,” Luther says.
The trucker turns from the window.
“Morning.”
“That your rig out there?”
“Sure is.”
“Where you headed?”
“Memphis.”
“What are you hauling?”
“Sugar.”
The old man drags on his cigarette, then squashes it into an untouched egg yolk.
“Gets lonely on the road, doesn’t it?” Luther says.
“Well, it certainly can.”
He doesn’t begrudge the man’s curt replies. They don’t spring from discourtesy but rather a desolate existence. Had he more to say he would.
Luther slides out of the booth, zips his sweatshirt, and nods goodbye to the trucker.
The man raises his coffee mug to Luther, takes a sip.
At the cash register Luther pays for his breakfast and then gives Brianna the waitress an additional ten dollar bill.
“See that old man sitting alone in the booth? I’m buying his breakfast.”
And Luther strolls out the front door to watch the sunrise.
15
PULLING out of the Waffle House parking lot, Luther can hardly hold his eyes open. It’s Monday, 6:00 a.m., and since Friday evening he’s managed only four hours of sleep at a welcome center outside Mount Airy, North Carolina.
He takes the first left onto Pondside Drive, a residential street so infested with trees that when he glances up through the windshield he sees only fragments of the magenta sky.
He follows Pondside onto Cattail, a street that dead-ends after a quarter mile in a shaded sequestered cul-de-sac, its broken pavement hidden beneath a stratum of scarlet leaves.
Luther kills the ignition and climbs into the backseat.
Lying down on the cold sticky vinyl, he takes out the tape recorder, presses play, and drifts off to the recording of Mr. Worthington begging for the lives of his family.
When he wakes it’s 11:15 a.m. and the crystal sunlight of the October morning floods the Impala, the vinyl warm now like a hot water bottle against his cheek.