What Comes Next

by John Katzenbach

  He thought what he intended to do was borderline illegal. If it wasn’t against the law, it ought to be. Immoral, as well, which his brother the big-time lawyer would be particularly helpful with. Lawyers were always more comfortable with moral shades of gray.

  “Brian?”

  Silence. He expected this.

  He peered up over the lip of the doorsill. Mark Wolfe should be coming out soon, he told himself, as he shivered.

  He thought about his brother. When they were little it had always surprised him that Brian was so fearless. If Adrian and his friends were doing anything—swimming, playing ball, making trouble—Brian was always tagging along, and first to volunteer for whatever mischief was in store. Adrian remembered a moment where they had been called on the carpet by their parents. After being admonished, Brian had been sent off to his room. He had been called out further. You’re supposed to watch out for your little brother and Adrian, how could you let him . . . He had been unable to explain that even with their difference in age it was Brian who seemed to be the leader. Backwards, he thought. Our growing up was backwards. But then, he said out loud, “But that still doesn’t tell me why you shot yourself.”

  Adrian thought that everything in his life was a mystery except his work. Why did Cassie love him? Why did Tommy die? What was wrong with Brian that he hadn’t been able to see what he was going to do?

  He thought his disease had one thing going for it. All these questions and all the sadness that had stalked him were going to disappear in a fog of loss. He breathed out. I’m dead already, he thought.

  He heard a car door shut.

  A quick glance and he saw Mark Wolfe pulling out of his driveway, just as he had the day before. The sex offender drove off.

  Adrian looked down at his watch. It had been a gift from his wife on their twenty-fifth anniversary. Waterproof—although he rarely went into the water. Shockproof—although he never dropped it. A lifetime ­battery—Well, he said to himself, pretty good chance it will still keep time after I’m gone.

  Adrian planned to wait fifteen minutes. The second hand was almost hypnotic as it swept relentlessly around the clock face.

  When he was certain that Mark Wolfe had headed off to his job at the home store, Adrian exited his car and walked quickly up to the trim house.

  He knocked on the door loudly, then pushed a doorbell buzzer.

  When the door cracked open and the slightly vacant eyes of the mother peered around the edge, Adrian stepped up.

  “Mark’s not here,” she said immediately.

  “That’s okay,” Adrian replied. He pushed against the door insistently. “He told me to come and spend some time with you.”

  “He did?” Confusion. Adrian took advantage. He thought he knew the woman’s disease better than he knew his own.

  “Of course. We’re old friends. You remember now, don’t you?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He just pushed his way into the house and immediately went to the living room, standing almost in the same spot as he had the night before.

  “I don’t remember you,” she said. “And Mark doesn’t have many friends.”

  “We spoke before.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday. You remember.”

  “I don’t . . .”

  “And you said to come back because there was so much to talk about.”

  “I said to . . .”

  “We were talking about so many things. Like your knitting. You wanted to show me your knitting.”

  “I like to knit things. I like to make mittens. I give them to the neighborhood children.”

  “I bet Mark takes them around for you.”

  “Yes. He does. He’s a good boy.”

  “Of course he is. He’s the best boy there could possibly be. He likes to make the kids happy.”

  “With mittens in the winter. But now . . .”

  “It’s spring. No more mittens. Not until next fall.”

  “I forget, how are you friends with Mark?”

  “I wish you would make me mittens.”

  “Yes. I make mittens for the children.”

  “And Mark takes them around. What a good boy.”

  “Yes. He’s a good boy. I forget your name.”

  “And he watches television with you.”

  “We have our shows. Mark likes special shows. We watch together all the funny shows, early, and we laugh, because they get into such trouble on all those shows. And then he makes me go to bed because he says his shows come on later.”

  “So he watches your shows with you, and then he watches his shows on the nice big television.”

  “He got that for us. It’s like having real people here visiting. Not many friends come over.”

  “But I’m your friend and I came.”

  “Yes. You look old like me.”

  “I am. But we’re friends now, aren’t we?”

  “Yes. I suppose.”

  “What are his shows like?”

  “He won’t let me watch.”

  “But sometimes you can’t sleep, isn’t that right. And you come down here.”

  She smiled. “His shows are . . .” She laughed out loud. “I shouldn’t say the words.”

  She had a coy, childish look on her face. Adrian watched her bounce between old and sick and childlike. He knew he had learned something, and he was struggling inwardly to sort it out himself. He could feel his wife, his son, his brother, all surrounding him, there but not there, trying to tell him what it was, tugging at his ability to perceive. He looked over at the woman. Two crazed people, he thought. I can understand her but she can’t understand me.

  Adrian thought it was all a foreign language and this made him think of Tommy, who died in a place that was so distant he could barely think of it in anything other than images coming across a screen. And this made him turn toward the big-screen television set and recall something that the woman had said and something that he remembered his son had told him, except it wasn’t really his son but his son’s ghost.

  Knitting, he thought. She knits.

  “Where is your computer?” he asked. “Do you keep it with the knitting?”

  The woman smiled. “Of course.” She went over and grabbed the bag with yarns and swatches of material that was next to the recliner, just where Adrian had seen it the night before. She brought it over to him. Beneath a skein of pink and red yarn was a small Apple laptop. There were computer wires attached.

  He looked over at the television. He runs the computer through that big television screen after his mother has been sent to bed.

  “I’m going to take this to Mark,” he said. “He needs it at work.”

  “He leaves it here,” she said. “He always leaves it here.”

  “Yes, but the policewoman who came will want it, so he should take it to her from his work. That’s what he wanted.”

  Adrian knew all his lies would work, even if the old woman seemed reluctant. It was perverse. The childhood phrase taking candy from a baby leaped into his mind.

  He took the computer and started toward the door.

  It will be protected.

  Password? Mark Wolfe hadn’t struck Adrian as stupid. And he remembered the contemptuous look that Detective Collins had on her face when she’d taken the computer that the sex offender had offered up so easily. Candyman. How obvious, he thought. A password so pregnant with associations that anyone examining the machine would have to believe it would lead to incriminating evidence, when all it traveled was some innocent dark and dead end.

  The computer in his hands—the mother’s computer—that was the one. He looked over at the gray-haired, wild-eyed woman.

  “Did Mark ever have a pet, growing up . . .”

  “We
had a dog named Butchie.”

  Adrian smiled. Butchie. That was one possibility.

  “Mark had to put him down. Butchie liked to hunt things and he bit people.”

  So does your son.

  The old woman suddenly looked as if she was going to cry. Adrian thought for a moment, and then he carefully asked another question. “And what was the name of the neighbor’s daughter, you remember, the one that lived next door, or was it just down the street when Mark was a teenager?”

  The old woman’s face changed in an instant. She scowled. “This is like a memory game, isn’t it? I can’t remember very many things anymore and I forget stuff . . .”

  “But that girl, you remember her, don’t you?”

  “I didn’t like her.”

  “Her name was . . .”

  “Sandy.”

  “She was the one that got Mark into trouble for the first time, right?”

  The woman nodded.

  Sandy.

  Adrian started toward the door once more, the computer under his arm, but he paused as he reached for the handle and asked, “What’s your name?”

  She smiled. “I’m Rose.”

  “Like the beautiful flower?”

  “I used to have the reddest cheeks when I was young and married to . . .”

  She stopped. She put her hand to her mouth.

  “Where did he go?”

  “He left us. I don’t remember. It was bad. We were alone and it was hard. But now Mark takes care of me. He’s a good boy.”

  “Yes. He is. Who left you?”

  “Ralph,” she said. “Ralph left us. I was always Ralph’s Rose and he said I would be in bloom forever, but he left and I don’t bloom no more.”

  Ralphsrose, Adrian thought. Maybe.

  “This has been so much fun, Rose. I’ll come back and we can talk about knitting again. Maybe you will knit me those mittens.”

  “That would be nice,” she said.

  26

  Jennifer was singing softly to Mister Brown Fur when the door opened. It was not a specific song as much as she was blending together every lullaby and children’s ditty she could remember, so that “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and “Itsy Bitsy Spider” joined with “The Bear Went Over the Mountain” and “I’m a Little Teapot.” She mixed in the occasional Christmas carol, as well. Any lyric, any verse, any thread of music she could recall was hummed and sung quietly. She stayed away from rap and rock and roll because she couldn’t imagine how they would comfort her. She caught her breath when the sound of the door interrupted her, but just as swiftly she kept going, raising her voice, increasing volume. “God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay, remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas day . . .”

  “Number Four, please pay attention.”

  “Oh, the bear went over the mountain, the bear went over the mountain, the bear went over—”

  “Number Four, stop singing now, or I will hurt you.”

  It was the woman speaking in a monotone. Jennifer had no doubt that the threat was sincere.

  She ceased.

  “Good,” the woman said.

  Jennifer wanted to smile. Small rebellions, she told herself. Do what they want but.

  “Pay attention,” the woman said.

  I know where you are, Jennifer thought. She didn’t know why this was important to her, but she knew it was.

  The few seconds that she had peeked beneath her blindfold had done much for her sense of strength. It had orientated her in the room. She knew about the video camera pointed in her direction. She had taken in the stark white walls, the gray color of the floor. She had quickly measured the size of her space and, most critically, she had seen her clothes stacked near the doorway. They were all folded neatly, placed next to her backpack, as if they had been laundered and were waiting for her. It was not the same as actually being dressed, but the mere possibility of climbing back into her jeans and a sweatshirt had given her a sense of hope.

  The camera had given her plenty to think about.

  She could sense its unerring eye, watching her.

  Jennifer understood it meant there was no privacy.

  At first, it had reddened her face, and she felt a wave of violation coming over her. But, nearly as swiftly, she had understood that whoever was watching wasn’t really watching her as much as they were watching a prisoner. She was still anonymous. She was still hidden. Maybe her body had been exposed but not Jennifer. It was as if there was a distinction between who she was and what she did. The two were separate. Actions were being carried out by some Jennifer look-alike called Number 4, while the real Jennifer clutched her bear and sang songs and tried to figure out what she was trapped inside. She knew she had to work hard to protect Real Jennifer while making Fake Jennifer seem real to the man and the woman. Her jailers.

  And there was one other thing she managed to understand about the camera. It meant that she was needed. Whatever drama was being played out she was the main actor.

  She did not know how long this necessity would keep her alive. But it meant she had some time and she was determined to use it.

  “Number Four, I am going to place a chair at the end of the bed. You are to make your way to it and sit down.”

  Jennifer swung her feet over the bed. She stood. Then she stretched, lifting one leg up, then the other, flexing her muscles. She rose up on her tiptoes and lowered herself several times in quick succession. Then she twisted one arm behind her back, stretching her torso. She repeated this movement with the other arm. She could feel her muscles contracting, then releasing, and stiffness exiting from her bones.

  “It is not exercise time, Number Four. Please do as I say without delay.”

  Jennifer rolled her head, loosening her neck, then carefully walked to the foot of the bed, keeping a hand against the frame to steady herself. She reached out and felt the wooden back of a chair and maneuvered into it. She sat primly, hands folded on her lap, her knees pressed together, a little like a mischievous schoolgirl in a catechism class, afraid of the teacher nun.

  She could sense the woman moving closer to her. She half turned in her direction, awaiting further orders.

  The blow was unexpected and savage.

  An open hand, delivered across her cheek, nearly knocking her to the floor. The shock was as painful as the blow. Behind her blindfold she could see stars and her face screamed out in pain, as if nerve ends all over her body had been subjected to an electric current. Dizziness mixed with pain in a concoction that made her head spin. She gasped for air. She knew she made some animal-like whimper noise of hurt, but she couldn’t tell whether it had echoed in the room or only inside of her head. She gripped the chair seat, trying to steady herself, knowing, although not knowing why, that if she fell she would be kicked and hurt even more.

  She wanted to say something but no words made it past her lips, only choking sobs.

  “Are we a little clearer about things now, Number Four?” the woman asked.

  Jennifer nodded.

  “When I give you an order, you are to comply. I believe we had made this clear to you before.”

  “Yes. I was trying . . . I didn’t realize . . .”

  “Stop whining.”

  She stopped.

  “Good. I have some questions for you. You will answer them carefully. Do not volunteer more information than is asked for. I want you to keep your head steady and looking straight forward.”

  Jennifer nodded. She sensed the woman leaning forward, closer to her, and she heard a whisper that echoed a hiss. “The answer to the first question is eighteen,” she said.

  Behind the mask, Jennifer blinked, as if surprised. She understood that was for me only.

  She could hear the crinkling sound of the woman’s outfit as
she moved backward, maneuvering a small distance away. There was a pause, and Jennifer fixed herself, robot-like, back into the schoolgirl’s position and stared straight ahead, even if she was looking into the blackness of the blindfold.

  “Good. Number Four, tell us how old you are.”

  Jennifer hesitated then blurted out: “I’m eighteen.”

  A lie, she thought, that saved her from some pain. The woman continued.

  “Do you know where you are?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know why you’re here?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know what will happen to you?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know what day it is? Or perhaps, the date, the time, or even if it is day or night?”

  She shook her head, and then stopped herself. “No,” she said. This time her voice cracked slightly as if the word no was expensive porcelain and would shatter at the smallest slip.

  “How long have you been here, Number Four?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you frightened, Number Four?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you afraid of dying, Number Four?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want to live?”

  “Yes.”

  “What will you do in order to survive?”

  Jennifer hesitated. There was only one answer available.

  “Anything.”

  “Good.”

  The woman’s voice was coming from a few feet away. Jennifer suspected that she had moved behind the camera, so that her answers went directly into the lens. She felt a small surge in confidence. I’m being filmed. The ability to comprehend, even if only slightly, what was happening to her helped. She felt her muscles tense. They don’t know how strong I can be, she told herself. Then doubt crept into her imagination. I don’t know how strong I can be. She wanted to cry, give in to sobs and despair. Or else fight back, but she did not know how. She was trapped between two poles, as the woman’s questions followed relentlessly.