Terri bellowed out, “Professor Thomas?” although she knew he wasn’t there. She walked through the living room, repeating, “Professor Thomas, are you here?” while Wolfe stepped into a side room.
She shouted at the sex offender, “Hey, stick with me!” but he ignored her.
“This is what you really need to see,” Wolfe called out loudly.
She went to his side and saw that he had already seated himself at a computer in the professor’s study. Wolfe was typing furiously.
“What are you going to show me?” she asked.
“I suppose you want to see the website that got him all excited. He told me it wasn’t the right one, but then he called you about the damn scar and the—”
“Yeah, the tattoo, keep going.”
She bent to the computer screen, leaning over the sex offender’s shoulder.
The welcome page for Whatcomesnext.com came up in front of them. Wolfe typed in the password Jennifer and Greetings Psychprof appeared before the image of the young woman came up on the screen. It seemed grainy, shaky, as if out of focus to Terri Collins, although she could feel her pulse accelerate, so it was more likely that it was her that made it difficult to see, not the high-def feed.
She saw a naked young woman, chained to a wall, handcuffed and hunched in a fetal position, clutching a stuffed animal. The figure of the young woman was partially turned away from the camera, so making out the details of her body was difficult, and a dark hood obscured her face. Terri could see the black flower tattoo on a scrawny thin arm, but not the scar that Professor Thomas had asked about.
“Jesus,” she said. “What the hell is this?”
“It’s a live webcam feed,” Wolfe said. He sounded a little like the professor. “The world wants everything to be live, immediate. No delays. Instant gratification.”
Terri continued to stare, trying to collate the image of the young woman with her memory of Jennifer, unconsciously duplicating precisely what Adrian had done earlier.
“It’s got to be an actress,” Terri said, disbelieving.
“You think?” Wolfe snorted. “Detective, you don’t know anything about this.”
He clicked on the keys that brought up the menu. He chose a random chapter and the two of them were suddenly watching the blindfolded girl bathe herself, trying to hide her nakedness from prying eyes. The figure of a man swept in and out of the camera feed. This time, Terri saw the scar in addition to the tattoo.
“Those don’t fit,” she said out loud, although there was hesitancy in her voice.
“Yeah,” Wolfe said. He spoke rapidly, excited. “That’s what you told the professor last night, except it was pretty damn obvious to me that he didn’t believe it. Or he thought these were Hollywood-type makeup.”
“I need to see her face,” Terri said. Her voice had dropped almost to a whisper.
“Can do,” Wolfe said. “Sort of. They keep her masked.” He brought up the chapter where Number 4 was interviewed. There was a little distortion in her voice as she answered questions, and Wolfe the expert explained, “They probably just tweaked the audio feed a little so that you couldn’t just listen and recognize what she sounds like.”
Terri stared at the blindfolded girl, paying careful attention to each word she spoke. She thought of the times she had sat across from Jennifer. She tried to hear something in the voice that would confirm that her Jennifer memory and what she was seeing now were the same person.
It has to be her, she thought, astonished, even when she heard “I’m eighteen” tumble from the girl’s mouth.
“Where . . .” she started.
“That’s the thing,” Wolfe said. “It’s not in LA or Miami or Texas. This damn website is about two hours from here.”
Terri could see a map in her head. Does it take two hours to drive someone into purgatory? she wondered.
“I’ve got the GPS,” Wolfe continued. “Same as the professor does. Probably that’s where he’s headed. In fact, I’d count on it. He’s just a little bit ahead of us. But I bet the old guy won’t be driving as fast.”
No. He will, Terri thought. She did not say this out loud. She pulled out her cell phone to call him but Wolfe shook his head. “He’s not that modern,” the sex offender said, as if replying to the obvious question. He reached into his pocket and plucked out his own cell, the one Adrian had used.
“All right, then. Let’s get going,” Terri said.
Wolfe clicked the mouse and the website closed down with a cheery Goodbye Psychprof.
The detective and the sex offender hurried out of Adrian’s house, running across the driveway to Terri’s car, almost step for step in the same path Adrian had taken a short time earlier. Had they been a little slower to act and instead lingered in fascination in front of the computer screen for a few more seconds, they would have seen the hooded girl suddenly stiffen with alarm as the door to her cell opened.
41
Jennifer shrank back, although with her back against the wall, and chained to the bed, there was nowhere left for her to retreat. She listened to the now familiar sounds of the woman crossing the room. She felt beaten, abused, starved. The bleeding between her legs had stopped but she remained raw and sore. She understood that she was only a skeleton barely clinging to a pretend life, and when she moved she expected to hear her bones clacking together. She assumed the man was right next to the woman, although she couldn’t hear him. He always traveled silently, which would have terrified her more except she had gone past whatever line existed between rationale and fear. It was no longer possible for her to be more scared, and so, curiously, she was hardly frightened at all. She was too young to articulate to herself that she was resigned, but blackened defeat swept over her.
She thought: When you know you’re dying, there’s nothing really to be afraid of. My dad wasn’t scared. I’m not scared. Not anymore. Whatever you’re going to do to me, go ahead and do it. I don’t care. Not anymore.
She could sense the woman moving close, and then she was hovering over her.
“Thirsty, Number Four?” the woman asked.
Jennifer suddenly felt her throat was like sand.
She nodded.
“Then drink, Number Four.”
The woman pushed a bottle of water into her hand. The hood still had the small slit cut into it over her mouth from when she had been drugged her first day as Number 4. She struggled to get the bottle to her lips, and even when she’d succeeded water dripped down through the hood to her chest and for a moment she wasn’t refreshed so much as she thought she was drowning. She caught her breath and kept gulping at the water bottle until it was empty even though she figured it was probably filled with drugs, for she believed that would be a good thing, because anything that numbed her to pain and to whatever was about to happen to her was absolutely fine with her.
“Better, Number Four?”
Jennifer nodded, although it was untrue. Nothing was better. She was suddenly almost overcome by the desire to scream out My name is Jennifer but she could no longer even form these words with her tongue and push them past her parched lips. Even with the drink of water she was still mute.
There was a momentary pause, and Jennifer heard a scraping sound of wood against the hard concrete floor. She knew what it was. The silent man had moved the interview chair into the customary position. In seconds, the woman confirmed the image that had already jumped into Jennifer’s mind’s eye.
“I would like you to move to the end of the bed. The chair that you sat in before is there. Please find it and sit down. Relax. Face the front.”
The woman’s orders were straightforward, spoken almost softly. To her surprise, Jennifer could hear a modulation in the woman’s voice. The punishing monotone that had sounded so harsh over so many days of captivity had softened. It was almost receptionist-offic
e friendly, as if the woman were asking Jennifer to do nothing more complicated than taking a seat while waiting for a long-scheduled appointment to begin.
She did not trust this new sound in the slightest. She knew she was still hated.
“It is time for a few additional questions, Number Four. Not many. This won’t take long.”
Jennifer lurched and crawled from the bed, her restraints rattling, as she made her way to the chair. She dragged Mister Brown Fur with her, like a soldier trying to haul a wounded buddy out of the line of fire. She no longer cared about her nakedness or the camera probing her body with its insistent curiosity. She groped the air until she found the seat and slipped onto it, staring straight ahead to the spot where she knew the lens was focused on her.
There was a momentary pause before the woman asked, “Tell us, Number Four . . . do you dream of freedom?”
The question took her by surprise. Like every other time the woman probed her feelings, Jennifer couldn’t see what the right answer was.
“No,” she said slowly. “I dream of going back to the way it was, before I came here.”
“But you told us that you despised that life, Number Four. You told us that you wanted to escape it. Was that a lie?”
“No,” Jennifer answered quickly.
“I think it was, Number Four.”
“No, no, no,” Jennifer responded, pleading, although what she was begging for she didn’t know.
The woman hesitated, before continuing. “Number Four, what do you think is going to happen to you now?”
Jennifer felt as if there were two of her in the room, occupying the same space. Half of her was dizzy, head spinning, confused by the small shift in the woman’s tones, while the other half was cold, nearly stiff with frozen feelings, knowing that no matter what she said, or what she did, she was near the end, although she didn’t want to imagine what the end would be like.
“I don’t know,” she replied.
The woman repeated herself: “Number Four, what do you think is going to happen to you now?”
Demanding an answer to that question was as cruel as anything that had happened to her, Jennifer thought. Responding was worse than being beaten, chained, humiliated, raped, and filmed. The question required her to look into the future, which had the emotional impact of being sliced with a razor blade. Jennifer realized that when she lived in the absolute moment it was terrible. But speculation was worse.
“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” she said, words rushed, exploding from her chest, high-pitched so that they defied the muffling from the hood.
“Number Four . . . let me try one last time . . . what—”
Jennifer interrupted. “I think,” she replied quickly, “that I will”—she slowed her words down—“never leave here. I think I’ll be here for the rest of my life. I think this is my home now, and there is no tomorrow or the next day. There wasn’t a yesterday or the day before that. There isn’t even a new minute waiting for me. There’s just this. Here. Now. That’s all.”
The woman remained quiet for a few seconds, and Jennifer imagined that either she liked what she heard or she hated it. Jennifer didn’t care either way. She had managed to respond without saying I’m going to die, which was the only real answer.
Then the woman laughed.
The sound carved right through Jennifer. It was almost painful.
“Do you want to save yourself, Number Four?”
What a dumb question, Jennifer thought. I can’t save myself. There has never been a way to save myself.
Although these words rattled in her imagination her head nodded up and down.
“Good,” the woman said. There was another brief hesitation.
“I have a request, Number Four,” the woman continued. A request? She wants a favor? Impossible. Jennifer bent slightly forward. Her nerve ends were on edge. Every word the woman said was somehow cheating her, but of what she wasn’t sure.
“You will do what I ask?” the woman continued.
Jennifer nodded again. “Yes. Whatever you ask, I’ll do.”
She didn’t think she had any alternative.
“Anything?”
“Yes.”
The woman paused. Jennifer expected some new delivery of pain. She’s going to hit me. Maybe the man will rape me again.
“Give me your bear, Number Four.”
Jennifer didn’t understand.
“What?” she said.
“I want the bear, Number 4. Right now. Hand it over.”
Jennifer nearly panicked. She wanted to scream. She wanted to run and hide. It was like being asked to give up her heart or her breath. Mister Brown Fur was the only thing that reminded Jennifer that she was Jennifer. She could feel the toy’s rough synthetic fur against her naked skin. In that instant, it seemed more intense, as if the stuffed animal had cleaved to her body, fused together with her. Give up Mister Brown Fur? Her throat closed. She choked and gasped and rocked back in her seat as if she’d been punched hard in the chest.
“I can’t, I can’t,” Jennifer moaned.
“The bear, Number Four. So I have something to remember you by.”
She could feel tears welling up in her eyes and nausea filled her stomach. She thought she was going to be sick. She could feel the tiny toy arms of the stuffed animal clutching her like a baby’s. She wanted to fall into a hole.
“The bear, Number Four. This is my final request.”
She did not know what else she could do. Slowly, she pushed Mister Brown Fur away from her breast and extended him outward. Her shoulders were wracked, shaking, and she could not withhold her sobs. She felt the woman’s hand brush against hers as Mister Brown Fur was taken from her. She tried hard to stroke the toy’s fur as it slipped from her grip. Her loneliness was complete. Nothing except I’m sorry I’m sorry goodbye goodbye goodbye formed in her mind. She barely heard the next words from the woman.
“Thank you, Number Four. Now, Number Four, we think the time has arrived for the end. Would that be acceptable to you?”
The question stifled her. She felt more naked than ever before.
“Acceptable, Number Four?”
Mister Brown Fur, I’m sorry. I failed you. It was all my fault. I’m so sorry. I wanted to save you.
“The time to end, Number Four?”
She could tell this was still a question that demanded a response, but as usual Jennifer didn’t know what to reply. Say yes and die. Say no and die.
“Would you like to go home now, Number Four?”
What little breath she had left within her caught sharply in her throat. She thought it was hot and steamy and fiercely cold, blizzard-like, both at the same time.
“Would you like to be finished?” the woman persisted.
“Yes,” Jennifer managed to squeak out, sobbing.
“The end then, Number Four?”
“Yes, please,” Jennifer said.
“Very well,” the woman said.
Jennifer couldn’t understand or believe what was happening. Fantasies of freedom cluttered her imagination. She twitched, and suddenly she felt the woman’s hands on hers. It was like touching a live wire and she shuddered through her entire body. The woman slowly undid the handcuffs, dropping them with a clanking noise to the floor. The chain rattled as it too dropped away. Jennifer felt dizzy, almost seasick, pitched back and forth, as if the chain and the cuffs had been holding her upright.
“The hood stays in place, Number Four. You will know when you are free to remove it.”
Jennifer realized she had lifted her hands to the black sheet covering her head. She instantly complied, dropping her hands into her lap, but she was terribly confused. How would she know?
“I am placing the key for you to leave this place in fr
ont of your feet,” the woman said slowly. “This key will open the only door still locked between you and freedom. Please remain seated for several minutes. You should count out loud. Then after you think enough time has gone by, you may find it and decide if you think it’s time for you to go home. You may take as much time as you like for this decision.”
Jennifer’s head reeled. She understood the remain seated portion of the command and the you should count. But the rest of the orders didn’t make any sense.
She remained locked into position. She heard the woman shuffle across the cell and the door open. This was followed by the sound of it closing and a bolt being thrown.
Her imagination seemed feverish, filling with images. The key was supposed to be right in front of her. She thought, They’re leaving. They’re running away and they just want me to wait until they’ve gone. That’s what criminals do. They need to make their getaway. That’s okay. I can play that game. I can do what they ask. Just go. Leave me behind. I’ll be okay. I can find my own way home.
“One one thousand. Two one thousand. Three one thousand . . .” She was whispering.
She could not help herself. Hope raced through her, alongside guilt. I’m sorry, Mister Brown Fur, you should be with me. I should be taking you home too. I’m sorry.
She convulsed. Head to toe. She imagined that Mister Brown Fur would be placed in front of a camera and tortured in her place. She thought she would never forgive herself for giving up the bear. She didn’t think she could go home without him. She knew she could not face her father again without him, even if her father was dead, although that impossibility didn’t seem a hurdle. Every part of her tightened like a screw being driven into wood.
“ . . .twenty one thousand, twenty-one one thousand . . .”
She told herself, Let enough time go by. Let them run. Let them go. You will never see them again.
It made sense to her. They’ve finished with me. It’s all over. She started to sob uncontrollably. She did not allow herself to form the words I’m going to live in her mind, but that feeling soared through her, keeping pace with the numbers of her self-clock.
What Comes Next Page 40