Four Thrillers by Lisa Unger

by Lisa Unger

  “Isabel, relax,” he’d say. “Clear your head.”

  And I’d feel that fog—the one that descends over me in time of stress or high emotion, the one that inhibits logical thought—I’d feel it start to lift.

  “There is no problem that doesn’t have a solution. There’s always a way,” he’d tell me. And I’d listen, know he was right.

  I felt his loss so profoundly that I almost just crawled into Trevor’s bed and pulled the covers over my head. My friend, my husband, my lover was a liar at least, quite possibly a criminal as well. But still the thought of being without him nearly crippled me. For all the fractures in our marriage, all the things that caused me pain, I truly loved him, had the most basic kind of faith in him, even if I’d never really trusted him again after his affair.

  For some reason, I found myself thinking back to my conversation with Detective Crowe. And love forgives? he’d asked bitterly. Love accepts, moves forward, I’d answered him. But maybe, in my case, love accepts too much, wants to live so badly that it creates what it needs to survive.

  Next to the computer keyboard my cell phone vibrated, started shimmying along the smooth white surface of the desk. I looked at the little screen. Erik calling. I hesitated, then answered it but didn’t say anything.

  “Don’t do this, Iz,” he said. “You don’t have to do this. Just come back and we’ll work it out together.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Or at least go to the lawyer’s office. You know where he is, right? John Brace and Son, on Park Avenue. He’ll know what to do. That detective said if we can’t get you to come back, he’s going to consider you a person of interest in all of this. A suspect, Iz. Let’s not have this get any worse than it already is.”

  I pressed the End button on my phone and set it back down. It started buzzing again a second later. Linda calling. I let it shimmy itself off the desk and fall to the floor. Eventually it stopped ringing.

  As I got up and walked away from it, it started buzzing again. That little phone, the fat silver weight of it, smooth and warm like a worry stone, had always been a source of comfort to me. Seemed like it was always in my hand, all the people in my life just one push button away. All those voices—my sister, my mother, my husband—at least as loud as my own, often louder. I left them all there calling after me.

  I took an old coat from my sister’s closet and I was about to leave when I had a thought. I ran to the room Erik used as an office and went into their file cabinet, which I knew they left unlocked. It was easy to find their passports—and mine among them. Linda and I had traveled with the kids last summer, an impromptu trip to Mexico. In the melee of traveling with two kids, our passports got confused. I had Linda’s at my apartment, or did. She had mine. I grabbed it with a wash of relief and euphoria. I thought that sometimes fate smiled on you, even when she had been slapping you around in every other way like the abusive, narcissistic bitch she is.

  *

  GRADY CROWE HATED hospitals—not that anyone liked them especially. But he didn’t dislike them for the same reasons as other people. He hadn’t watched anyone die in a hospital; he didn’t feel uncomfortable around sick people. It didn’t remind him of his own mortality.

  He just didn’t like the lighting, the stale decor, or the smell of an institutional kitchen. These things offended his aesthetic sensibilities, made him anxious and uncomfortable. And it annoyed him that people suffering from disease weren’t treated to a more pleasant environment. Wouldn’t it help them to feel better if they didn’t have to look at gray Formica and dirty white walls, if they didn’t have to look at themselves beneath the ugly glare of fluorescent lighting? And if their last days had to be spent here, shouldn’t a little more attention be paid to detail? Should the last thing they see be peeling wallpaper or a metal bed rail? Then again, maybe not everyone was as affected by these things as he was.

  His phone rang.

  “She’s moving,” Jez said on the other end. He heard a siren wailing in the background and she sounded a bit breathless.

  “Are you on foot?” he asked.

  “I am now. She took a cab to her sister’s apartment. I’ve been sitting here, waiting. She just left on foot, moving fast. I thought she’d hail another cab but she didn’t.”

  “Where’s the vehicle?”

  “Parked illegally across the street from the Books’ building.”

  “Where’s she going?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, drawing out the words as if she was talking to a toddler. “That’s why I’m following her.”

  “Keep me posted,” he said, glancing up at Linda Book, then over to the two kids who both seemed pretty bored or unhappy or both. He’d been asking them questions in the family waiting area, getting nowhere.

  “Where are you going?” Jez asked.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Then you keep me posted, too.”

  In the first smart move he’d made in twenty-four hours, he had left Jez outside the hospital while he went inside. He couldn’t hold Isabel Raine; he knew he had no legal reason to do so. But one of them could stay on her, see where she went. Maybe she’d lead them to her husband. Maybe they’d see someone following her, like the alleged thugs who’d nearly killed her stepfather.

  Isabel Raine was a runner. Not that he thought she was guilty necessarily, but she had an idea of herself that made her a flight risk. She was angry, she was arrogant, and she’d been betrayed. And she was looking for answers, thought she was better qualified than anyone to find them. She didn’t disappoint him, took the first opportunity she had to bolt. But, he’d noted, she’d waited until she knew her stepfather was okay, knew that he had family nearby, before she left. To him it said that she was a good girl at her core, if not a rule follower. Her staying when she could have more easily left was what they called in the business a telling detail. Not in the police business, in the writing business. The little quirk that spoke volumes about character.

  He’d read this in one of the myriad books he’d read about fiction writing. It had stayed with him. He thought it was something that made sense in real life, too, in police work. The two professions weren’t really so different. You had to have the belly of fire, that drive to know and solve and speculate, to follow your hunches and go where incident and evidence impelled you. You had to have a terrible curiosity about character, about what made people do the awful, wonderful, terrifying, brilliant things they do.

  He looked up at Linda Book, who was watching him.

  “She went to your apartment.”

  Linda nodded, as if this didn’t surprise her. “She has a key.”

  She stood by the window, leaned against the sill and looked out, her arms wrapped tight around her body. He noticed that the skin on her hands was creamy white, her nails short, sensible squares. She wore a honker of a diamond, cushion cut, a carat and a half at least. She clenched and unclenched this hand unconsciously, squeezing the thick cashmere of her coat. He could tell it was cashmere, had always been good about identifying fine fabrics by sight or touch.

  The way the light came in from the window, the golden light of afternoon, it caught the highlights of her hair. In the line of her nose and something about her brow, he saw Isabel Raine. It was easy to see they were sisters, though they had opposite coloring. Isabel Raine looked like she’d been dipped in milk. Linda Book was gilded by sunlight. They were both beautiful, but Linda Book was softer, more real somehow. It was the mother factor. There was a look to a certain type of mom, a compassionate knowledge of the human condition that can only come from changing diapers and soothing tantrums, bandaging knees and assuaging fears.

  “Where will she go, Ms. Book?”

  “Wherever she thinks the answers are,” she said, looking out the window again. He felt a wash of frustration. Stubborn stoicism must run in the family.

  “You’re not helping her,” he said. “You’re not protecting her.”

  “I’ve never been able t
o do either of those things, Detective. Never. Not unless she wants me to.” He watched her eyes drift over to her daughter, a tiny dark-haired girl who slumped in an uncomfortable chair, pretending to be asleep. “If I knew where she was going, I’d tell you.”

  His phone rang again. He saw it was Jez, so he answered quickly.

  “I lost her,” she said, yelling over street noise.

  “What? How?” he said sharply, causing both Linda and the girl to look at him.

  “I got caught in the crowd pushing out of the train and she snaked in. The doors closed and she was gone.”

  “What train?”

  “The uptown N/R.”

  “Fuck me.”

  Linda Book shot him an annoyed look, shook her head. The girl smiled, a small, amused turning up of the corner of her mouth. And in that second she was identical to her aunt. Detective Crowe was really starting to dislike this family of stubborn, too-smart women with bad attitudes.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked her, sounding a little petulant even to himself.

  “What can I do, Crowe?”

  “See if you can catch her at the next station.” He heard her release an exasperated breath.

  “Okay.” She said it as if he was an idiot and it would never work but she’d try it anyway. He ended the call. If he’d been alone, he’d have kicked something, issued a string of expletives to blow off steam. But he managed to keep his composure.

  “I have an idea.” It was the girl, looking at him as if he might be interested in her thoughts.

  “Really,” he said, sarcastic and annoyed. He saw anger, anger rather than intimidation, flash on her small face. He hated to admit it, but it cowed him a bit. He kept his eyes on her. She turned to her mother, as if he no longer deserved to be spoken to.

  “Make Daddy go home and check the computer,” she said. “You can use the spyware you installed to see what sites she visited and try to figure out where she went that way.”

  “What spyware?” asked Linda, widening her eyes and lifting her brow in a bad imitation of innocence.

  “Yeah, right,” said Emily. “Like we don’t know, Mom.”

  “Hey, that’s a good idea, kid,” he said, surprised.

  Emily Book gave him a nasty smirk. “Duh.”

  Five minutes later Erik Book was on his way downtown. Linda Book looked uneasy, rubbed her temples with the spread thumb and index finger of one hand, as though she was wondering if she was helping or hurting her sister.

  WHEN THEY WERE girls, before their father died—because after that neither of them were ever girls again—everyone thought of Izzy as the difficult one. If Izzy had been first, Margie famously told everyone, there wouldn’t have been two. She was the one with colic, the bad sleeper, the finicky eater, the one who never napped. It had been said so many times that it became a kind of family legacy.

  But Linda knew the truth. Izzy was wild, yes, where Linda was obedient. Izzy was outspoken where Linda was quiet. Izzy was honest where Linda was tactful. All these things added up to make Linda seem like the angel and Izzy the rebel. But as for who was the good girl, and who was the bad, Linda knew the truth.

  She watched Emily now and saw the same pure soul she knew existed in her sister. In Trevor she saw the same conviction that good would always triumph over evil, a belief fueled by the mythologies of his comics and the legends of Star Wars, that there was a clear right and wrong in every situation. He sulked over by the doorway, battling his conscience and the nagging feeling she knew he had that following the rules in this case might not have been that right thing. He looked confused. She wanted to tell him that he was only going to get more confused as time went on, that things would never be as clear as they were right now. She’d been like him once, so righteous and sure. Poor Fred could attest to her punishing standards. She wanted to tell her son that it was all just shades of gray. But that was a lesson for another day.

  “You did good, Trev,” she said to comfort him. “Izzy needs our help right now, even if she doesn’t know it.”

  Her son nodded uncertainly, wrapped his arms tightly around his thin middle. Emily gave Trevor a dirty look.

  “Tattletale,” she hissed. “What a baby.”

  “Shut up,” he said, his voice rising high and breaking. “It was your idea to check the spyware.”

  “Emily, give me a break,” Linda said.

  “What?” she said. “He is.”

  They started yelling, speaking over each other unintelligibly. They always did this, reacted to stress by fighting with each other. The sound of it was maddening.

  “That’s enough,” Linda said, raising her voice. They both stopped and stared at her, mouths in wide, surprised O’s. Emily returned to her seat and flopped herself down dramatically. Trevor went back to his corner to sulk.

  “I need some quiet,” she said more softly. “Please. I have to think.”

  She wanted to be angry with her sister for bolting again. But she couldn’t, the same way you couldn’t be mad at a cat for scratching furniture or a dog for chewing up your shoes. Isabel was just being Isabel.

  There was an experiment Linda had read about, where people were asked to deliver electric shocks to a person seated in another room out of sight. The experiment revealed that most people would keep delivering the shocks, no matter how loud and tortured the screams from the other room became, as long as someone in authority told them to do it. Linda knew that she’d be one of those people. She’d be racked with guilt and self-doubt, but she’d keep pressing that button until someone told her it was time to stop.

  Izzy would be the one who stood up and protested, who bucked authority. She’d beat the crap out of the person delivering orders and then race to rescue the injured. And in some circles, this would make her a bad seed, an undesirable.

  Until her affair with Ben, Linda had never broken a rule in her life. And she’d been brutally judgmental of people who in her opinion had. She tortured Margie and Fred for years, because to her it seemed that Margie should have kept her vows to her husband, even in death. And, of course, her father had been the ultimate rule breaker. He’d defied the strictest rules of all: Don’t go. Don’t leave me. Love me forever, Daddy. And how she’d hated him for it. It took years of therapy for her to come to this realization.

  Even in her art she never took risks, followed the rules of convention, the typical ideas about what comprised a beautiful image. And how she’d been praised for it, lauded and paid ridiculous sums for art and journalistic photographs that she secretly believed were common, maudlin—as Ben had reviewed her—or appealing to a base and silly chicken soup sentimentality.

  Reflexively she dialed Izzy’s number and was surprised when her own husband answered.

  “Hey,” he said. Even in that one word, she heard all his shame and despair. She ignored it, could not deal with his emotions or what he’d done to their life. In her mind, financial infidelity was a more egregious betrayal than a sexual one. She honestly didn’t know what the future held for them, but for the time being, she couldn’t think about it. She’d forgiven him before he’d even confessed; she’d meant it, too. But that didn’t mean she didn’t hate him at the moment.

  “You found her,” she said, feeling the flood of relief. She felt both Emily’s and Trevor’s eyes on her.

  “Uh, no. She left her phone. I found it on the floor of Trevor’s room.”

  “Oh, God.” She shook her head at the kids, and both of them seemed to slump in disappointment. Izzy had dropped the line that connected them, gone off the grid. This terrified Linda more than anything else.

  “I’ll find her. I promise,” he said. She could hear how badly he wanted to do that, to be the hero here. “She Googled someone named Camilla Novak. Do you know who that is?”

  She searched the memory banks of her rattled brain. “No,” she said finally.

  “There’s an address in SoHo, not far from here.”

  Linda rummaged through her bag and found a caple
ss Bic pen and a receipt from the coffee shop where she’d fucked Ben just hours before. It reminded her that they both had a lot to regret.

  “Give it to me,” she said, her tone harder, less yielding than she intended. She just couldn’t help her anger, couldn’t keep from expressing it. She scribbled down the address, wondering aloud to Erik why Izzy had taken the uptown N/R.

  “I don’t know. But she also looked up someone named Kristof Ragan. Ring any bells?”

  “No.”

  She wrote the name down. “Anything else?”

  “She went to some site called Services Unlimited. It looks like an escort service masked as temp services. Weird.”

  “Why would she go to a site like that?”

  “No idea.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Just American Express. She was probably trying to track charges.”

  “Is that it?”

  “That’s it. Hey, are you going to give that to the detective?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Okay,” he said, then he paused and issued a sharp breath. “Just give me a head start. If I can get to her first, maybe I can convince her to turn herself in to the lawyer. We don’t want her taken into custody, right? She’s been through enough.”

  The detective returned to the room then with sodas for the kids and a coffee for her. She thought he wore too much cologne; it made her sinuses ache.

  “Okay,” she said. “Give me a call back when you find something.”

  She ended the call and stuffed the paper in her bag. She looked at the detective, offered him a grateful smile for the coffee he handed her. “He’s checking the computer now. He’s going to call right back.”

  The detective nodded. “Okay,” he said, handing her a card. “Call me on my cell if he finds anything.”

  “Where are you going”?

  “I have a lead I want to follow up.”

  They stared at each other and in that moment it was hard to keep what she knew from him, an authority figure. He’d been open with her, told her everything he’d learned about Izzy’s husband. She felt guilty, nervous for keeping things from him, even if it was only to give Erik a head start so that he might talk some sense into her crazy sister. She was glad when he moved toward the door.