by Kate Aeon
Michael wasn’t in the bathroom.
“Undress,” Michael said.
Phoebe almost balked. But... Alan...
She put the backpack down. Undressed.
“Brush your teeth.”
She found a new toothbrush and toothpaste on the sink. She did as she was told.
“Get the scissors out of the medicine cabinet.”
She took them out.
“Cut your hair off.”
“What?”
“Cut your hair off. Don’t leave more than about an inch all over.”
She started cutting, and the sink quickly filled with curling black strands as long as her arm. It took her a while — she could only think of lambs being sheared, and that made her hands shake worse.
But at last she finished.
“Into the shower. I want you clean and smelling nice when we renew our vows — none of his touch on you, no whiff of your puke. You understand.”
“Yes.”
She showered, and he directed her to dry off and leave her clothes on the floor. She picked up her backpack, and he directed her into the kitchen, and from there into the dining room. Michael wasn’t there, either, and neither was Alan. But another man was. A doctor. He lay on the floor against one wall, blindfolded, his mouth taped over with duct tape, his arms and legs bound. He had on scrubs and a white lab coat with Dr. Beacham-Smith embroidered over the left breast pocket. Phoebe could see his chest rising and falling. Blood in his hair, drying on his forehead.
“Don’t touch Morrie. He did me a favor, albeit only at gunpoint — so he gets to live.”
Morrie. Alan’s friend.
Oh, God. Michael’s path to her had been wide and bloody.
“Walk over to my table,” Michael said, and Phoebe, who had been staring at Morrie, willing him to wake up or do something to show her he would be all right, jumped.
On Michael’s table, which was a cheap card table set up under the dining room chandelier, she found clothes. White leather panties. A leather bra. A huge round white pillow thing with elastic straps on it that she couldn’t figure out until she suddenly realized that it was the sort of maternity padding models who weren’t pregnant would use to model maternity wear. A blonde wig. A white dress. White ballerina flats.
“We’re going to renew our vows today,” Michael said in her ear. “For better or for worse, until death do us part. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
“Yes,” Phoebe said, staring at the clothes on the table.
“Put your wedding clothes on. And the pregnancy padding. And the wig.”
Phoebe started dressing. She kept the phone resting on her left shoulder, holding it in place with her ear, while she put on the bra and the panties. With her hair gone, her head felt too light. Her balance was off.
“I’m making a home movie of our ceremony, sweetheart. I filmed the wedding guests over in your place last night. Had nice mood lighting for them. And today, I’m getting great pictures of the bride dressing. You know, white actually films very badly. But your outfit is going to be white for such a short time, I think I’ll be able to tolerate the glare while it is. It’s the anticipation of color that makes white so exciting, you know?”
“Yes,” she said.
“You want to sound happy and loving when you say that, sweetheart. Because the adulterer I have here is going to be our witness for the first part of the ceremony. And we want to have enough of him left to sign all the papers.” Michael chuckled.
Phoebe put the cell phone down, struggled into the maternity padding, slipped into the dress and the flats, pulled on the wig, straightened everything. The shakes had given way to a horrible heaviness — to fear so bad she almost couldn’t get her arms and her legs to move.
Alan, she kept thinking. Alan. Do this for Alan. Maybe, maybe, you’ll have a chance to save him. Do everything you can to give yourself that chance.
She picked up the phone. “All right.”
“You look...” Michael laughed — a happy, open laugh. “You look like a white cow, actually. Oh, God. The camera adds a lot more than ten pounds.” His laughter died away. “This next part is going to be risky for you and your friend. Don’t make any mistakes. Walk to the end table beside the front door.”
Phoebe passed a bank of monitors, herself on some of them, empty rooms on others, the inside of an empty car on one. One screen, though, riveted her. On it, she saw Michael wearing a microphone headset, dragging a struggling, tape-bound Alan through an odd oval door, shoving him to the floor of a very small room also filled with monitors, and then looking at the monitors.
Until that moment, some part of her had held out hope that Michael didn’t really have Alan. That maybe the screams were taped. Or that he was hurting some stranger.
“And here we both are,” Michael said, seeing her looking at him. “Let me get settled.” He took a seat in a swivel chair bolted to the floor, turned around so that he was looking straight at her, and rested one cowboy-booted foot lightly on Alan’s crotch. “See your doctor?”
Phoebe saw Alan. He lay on the floor, bruised and bloodied, still in his scrubs and lab coat, glaring at Michael. He wore metal halo headgear that pulled his tongue out and clamped it, stretched, beyond the line of his lips. Phoebe remembered that headgear from her marriage. And then, while she watched, helpless to intervene, Michael took two alligator-clip wires and connected them from a small black box on the floor to the clamp. Phoebe remembered that box, too. Her breathing got faster, and the room started getting light around the edges. Started fading.
No. She had to breathe slower. Had to stay in control. She had to be able to help Alan.
Then Michael flipped the switch and Alan screamed and writhed and Phoebe’s whole body went rigid — Alan’s pain colliding with her memories.
“Isn’t that fun?” Michael asked, flipping the switch off.
“Don’t hurt him!” Phoebe screamed.
Michael flipped the switch again and over Alan’s wordless screams shouted, “Wrong answer, whore.”
Phoebe couldn’t think of the right answer. Alan was screaming, and his pain was her fault, all her fault, and all she could think to shout was, “Yes, Michael. Yes!”
“Yes, Michael,” Michael repeated, flipping the switch off again. “I like the sound of that. Wait until you see what we’re going to do to him once you get here.”
Breathe slower. Stay in control. Don’t be weak. Don’t be helpless.
Phoebe had to find a way to save Alan. Somehow.
“To the table, Phoebe. Time’s a-wasting. Chop-chop.” She limped to the table, her knee suddenly throbbing. She saw a tiny white beaded handbag, a key ring with two keys on it — a car key and a house key — what looked like a hearing aid, and a little plug of some sort.
“You’re looking at the wireless earphone/mike for your cell phone. And with it, the connector. The connector plugs into the base of the phone, the earphone/mike slips into your ear. You’ll wear the wig with the hair down so that, just in case one of those sharp-eyed Eagle Scouts has wandered to the other side of the building, he doesn’t notice something amiss. Put the earphone on, and then plug in the connector.”
Phoebe did as she was told.
“Put the cell phone into the handbag. Pick up the keys. And... Phoebe, leave your backpack right there. You already know your gun isn’t in it, right? I have that here with me.”
She’d known the Browning was gone — had known it the second she realized the cell phone was ringing from inside the bag’s holster pocket. But for the last two years that backpack had never been farther away than arm’s reach. When she let it slide to the floor, she realized how very completely she was in Michael’s power.
She was helpless.
At every turn, he’d taken her control away from her.
And he seemed to be reading her thoughts, for he said, “I don’t have any intention of having you turn the tables on me this time, dear. I spent nearly three months in a coma last time, thanks to you, and an incredible
amount of time and pain recuperating and rehabilitating afterward. So this time I’ve made very sure that everything will go just the way I want it to. I’ve spared no expense.”
Phoebe held the keys in her right hand. Swung the little beaded bag over her shoulder.
“Pull the plug on the monitors, Phoebe,” he said. “It’s right next to the door. Take the power strip with you when you leave. You’re going to toss it into the dumpster on your way past.”
She did as she was told.
“All right. Out the door, remembering that you don’t want anyone to notice you. At all.” In her ear, Alan screamed briefly. “Because this can get so much worse. Walk to space four-fifteen. The car sitting there is a light brown sedan. You’re going to get into it. And you’re going to come home.”
Phoebe took the next step of her descent into Michael’s hell, into the hopeless darkness.
She told herself that she had to hang on for Alan. Had to keep looking for a crack in Michael’s armor. Had to keep fighting until she had nothing left to fight with, because Alan had no one but her to keep Michael from him.
But hope was gone. Dead.
A blanket of black clouds and the drizzle that was the last passing of Helene brought forth the bleak day. But for Phoebe, all that remained was darkness.
Chapter Thirty
Brig stood in the parking lot in the strip mall while the woman who had called in the crime scene wept and hiccuped and talked all at once. Which made the interview an exercise in frustration.
“He... he... he... said he’d be here early. He was going to do a... a body aura reading... for me. And... and... and then we were going to share... share... our... share our essences.”
Brig considered that for a moment, did a quick mental translation from New Age Bullshit-ese to Guy on the Make, and got the picture. Yeah. A before-work quickie. Or, since she was here at seven in the morning and the place wouldn’t have opened until ten, maybe not such a quickie.
Very smooth.
“...So I got here... and his... his car... car was here, and I had the key he... key he... key he... key he...”
Record skipping a groove there, honey, Brig thought, curbing the urge to thump her once on the side of the head to see if he could unstick her.
“And the guy you were going to share essences with is...?”
“Ben... Ben... Ben... Margolies.”
For Brig, everything screeched to a halt. He’d been called to the strip mall for a homicide, and the responding uniform had shoved this bleached-blonde, fake-titted, gym-bunny bimbo in her spandex leotard in his face as the witness, and nobody had said which store in the strip mall was the problem. The crowd was in front of Hot Bodies Gym. And Brig had assumed the body was in the gym.
But the gym sat next to Moonstruck New Age Shoppe.
Which Brig had visited the day before, to talk to Ben Margolies about Phoebe Rain. Hadn’t been a particularly interesting talk.
But now Ben Margolies was dead?
Fuck.
Brig bolted past the chippie, leaving her protests to fade behind him in the drizzle and the grinding, steaming early-morning humidity. He zigged around the ambulance and the black-and-whites and the medical examiner’s van that had blocked his view of the doors to both businesses, jumped the crime scene tape in front of Moonstruck with badge in hand, and skidded to a halt just inside the door. Where he found himself beside techs and the medical examiner, and face-to-face with Ben Margolies, taped to a chair, sitting cross-legged with his eyes open and the corners of his mouth taped into a weird smile. A placard around his neck read, SURPRISE. With a signature in the lower right-hand corner, forty-five-degree angle upward. Sign of an optimist, Brig thought, and shook his head. The signature said, “Best wishes, Michael Schaeffer.”
Ben’s arms ended halfway down the forearms in bloody, ragged stumps. The amputated hands were nowhere in sight.
“Hands?”
“Not on the premises,” the ME said.
Brig fished out his wallet. Found the card that Toeller had given him the day before. Flipped it over, located the handwritten cell phone number on the back.
Called.
“Toeller.”
“Detective Brig Hafferty. We met yesterday.”
“Go ahead, Detective.”
“I’m at a crime scene that I think is related to your case. Guy named Ben Margolies, was one of our suspects briefly.”
“Right.”
“Missing his hands, wearing a little note from Michael Schaeffer. Note says, ‘Surprise.’ ”
“How do you know it’s from Michael?”
“He signed it.”
A whispered “Shit.”
“Yeah. You want to have your guys check on Phoebe for me real quick? Maybe run next door and see if Alan’s okay? This is — this is creepy.”
“Yeah,” Toeller said. “She was... they were fine at five. I saw both of them. The doctor got called into the hospital for a disaster. Prior to that they spent the night together at his place.”
“Thought she was going to stay at her place.”
“She’s just been full of surprises,” Toeller said, sounding pissed.
Brig stared at the cell phone. She’d gotten by them? Hell. He listened to Toeller on the radio, trying to raise his guys. Getting nothing.
Ice formed in Brig’s stomach, in his veins. To the techs he said, “I’ll be back. I’m going to check on something I think is tied in to this case.”
And in his ear Toeller said, “Not getting them. We were good half an hour ago when we did our last check-in.”
But they weren’t good anymore.
Surprise.
“I’m heading over now,” Toeller said, sounding like he was running, and Brig, running, too, kept the phone jammed to his ear as he jumped into his car. Put it on speakerphone, slammed it into its cradle, put the siren and the lights on and drove like hell through the nearly empty streets.
He was halfway there when he heard Toeller kick the door in.
Heard the hoarse “Sweet Jesus” an instant later.
And shouting. And the sounds of running feet. Upstairs. Downstairs. Doors slamming.
“Oh, my God,” from Toeller, and a second later, “That sick fuck.”
People shouting to each other in the background — nothing calm, nothing orderly. Brig heard chaos.
And Toeller saying, “Phoebe Rain is nowhere on the premises.”
And then someone yelling, “Found it!” and a pause, and the sound of running and heavy breathing, and then Toeller proved he knew how to swear.
“There’s a door cut through the downstairs bedroom closet, on the back wall,” he shouted as Brig pulled into the parking lot, screeched to a stop, and jumped from the car. In his ear Toeller said, “Not the west wall into the listening post we found. The fucking north wall into the townhouse behind his! And... oh, holy hell, I think we just found the doctor who called MacKerrie to the disaster.”
Which was the last thing Brig heard before he walked into the nightmare.
Chapter Thirty-One
Just ten minutes earlier, Phoebe drove away in the almost-new sedan that Michael had left waiting for her in his parking space. She hadn’t seen any agents in that section of the parking lot, and if they were there, they hadn’t recognized her. She had pulled out of the space, had driven away from the development, and no one had raised an alarm.
Now she traveled east with the gray smear of dawn in front of her, with rain spattering and spitting on the windshield. Traffic was still light; it was too early for most people to be going to work. Helene was almost gone, but driving off the main thoroughfares through neighborhood after neighborhood, Phoebe could see a lot of damage.
Phoebe listened to the voice in her ear. She couldn’t hear anything from Alan, and Michael had grown uncommunicative. He didn’t say much more than “Take the next left. Take the next right.”
Phoebe had no idea where he was taking her. Just that she was headed toward the beac
h. Dawn stayed either to her left or in front of her. So... south and east.
And then Michael said, “Pull into the parking lot coming up to your right,” and she saw a building ahead and a sign that said BAHIA MAR.
And she saw boats.
And suddenly she knew why the doorway she’d seen on the screen where Michael was had been oval, and why the chair was bolted to the floor. And why the space looked so cramped.
Now she knew how Michael planned to have his fun with her — and with Alan — without anyone interfering.
The Bahia Mar was a marina — a big one, with huge yachts and a forest of sailboats and smaller boats all tight to their piers against the storm that was finally passing. The water looked rough to Phoebe — black and ugly.
And her premonition came back to her. Of going under that water, of not coming back up.
If she was lucky, that would be her fate. But Michael’s photo story and all his drawings didn’t leave much doubt about what her fate was really going to be.
Not much doubt at all.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Alan lay on the polished wooden floor of Michael’s yacht, drooling from the tongue clamp, the duct tape around his wrists and ankles so tight he couldn’t feel his hands or feet. Michael was guiding Phoebe to him, and Alan couldn’t even move to help her.
Alan was hoping — praying — that Phoebe would suddenly exercise simple self-preservation instincts and run away.
He was going to die if she did. But he was going to die anyway. Michael had spent a little time telling him how. And what he was going to do to Phoebe when he had finished up with Alan.
But Phoebe kept coming. Alan tried thinking messages to her, telling her that she couldn’t hope to win this time, that Michael had stacked the deck against her, that all she could do was save herself.
But if she was enough of a psychic to get those messages, she was ignoring them. She was coming to try to save him, he knew — but it was all for nothing. When she reached the yacht — when she came aboard and put herself in Michael’s hands — it would be all over for both of them. Michael would sail out into the rough seas and go someplace where no one would ever find them, and then he would get everything he’d planned for.