Fear itself: a novel

by Jonathan Lewis Nasaw

  “You were a brat, too?”

  “And dumb. I wanted to see it go off, so I stuck my head over the edge of the chimney to watch. Blew off both eyebrows—I spent the worst two weeks of my life with my eyes all bandaged up, waiting to find out whether I’d get my sight back. I’ll tell you, it was the worst fear I’ve ever known.”

  The front door was locked, with yellow crime-scene tape across the doorway. Pender followed Dorie around the side of the house. They entered through the studio—the door had been closed and sealed with crisscrossed yellow tape, but the lock still didn’t function. Inside, the doorknobs and windowsills still bore traces of the gray carbon dust used to lift latent fingerprints; Dorie winced when she flipped the wall switch in the kitchen and saw the dried vomit on the parquet floor.

  “Oh, hell,” she muttered, dropping to her knees. “Now I’ll have to strip all the…all the…Oh, hell.” To her surprise, Dorie found herself weeping uncontrollably, big old honking, snot-snorkling, gut-wrenching sobs.

  Pender knelt beside her and began patting her back awkwardly. “It’s okay, it’s only a little stain,” he told her, though they both knew that it wasn’t the parquet she was crying about. “It’ll come right out.”

  “You think?” she asked, between hiccups as he helped her to her feet.

  “Sure,” said Pender confidently. He was no expert on house-cleaning, as Linda Abruzzi would soon discover, but as hard a drinker as he was, he did know a thing or two about vomit stains.

  8

  Seven words were all it took. Seven words to dispel any illusions Nelson might have had about how easy it would be to surrender, to play Simon Says until it was time for Simon to go. Seven words to prove to him that they’d all lied—his parents, his shrinks, his support groups—when they’d assured him that his fears were phantoms and his phobias the products of disordered emotions, not a malevolent universe.

  Seven words: I think it’s time for a game.

  “Game? What kind of game?”

  Simon, rummaging through his getaway satchel, ignored the question. “C’mon, it’ll be like old times.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Nelson.

  Simon looked up sharply. “Why, Nellie, was that a joke? I didn’t think you had it in you.”

  Nelson tried another tack. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t be very…These medications I’m taking…I’m afraid they’re not exactly conducive to…you know….” His voice trailed off miserably.

  “Not a problem,” Simon reassured him. “The game’s evolved way beyond that—it’s not about sex anymore.”

  Nelson didn’t like the sound of that at all—if the game wasn’t about sex, what was it about?—but he’d as soon have sawed off one of his own fingers with a rusty nail file as ask for clarification. “I really don’t think my psychiatrist would—”

  “Nellie?”

  “Yes?”

  “Hush now.”

  Nelson hushed.

  * * *

  The game began in the dark for Nelson, blindfolded with one of his own bandannas and locked in his walk-in bedroom closet with his hands tied behind his back. The irony of the situation did not escape him: Nelson had installed external locks on every closet door in the house to allay his own childhood fear of closets as potential hiding places for bogeymen and burglars.

  He had no way of telling how long he’d been in there before Simon came for him again. Long enough for two anxiety attacks, the first more acute, the second of longer duration. Pounding heart, vertigo, shortness of breath, hysterical paresis, feelings of dread so intense that a vasovagal syncope would have come as a blessing—unfortunately, Nelson wasn’t subject to syncopes.

  During the paretic phase of the second attack, as he lay on the floor of the closet with his hands tied behind him, the muscles of his legs so weak and trembly he might as well have been paralyzed, Nelson’s ears registered the snick of the closet door being unlocked.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” called Simon, cheerfully.

  No fucking way. His legs still too weak to propel him, Nelson dragged himself in the opposite direction, away from the door, away from the voice, humping like an inchworm until he could hump no farther, and curled up hyperventilating in the far corner of the closet, waiting to learn what fresh hell Simon had in store for him.

  He would have to wait a little longer, though—the door never opened. Instead he heard footsteps padding across the bedroom carpet—retreating footsteps.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Simon called again, from the hallway this time, and again Nelson told himself no fucking way. But they both knew he’d be coming out eventually—his claustrophobia would see to that.

  If there was a more terrifying, more vulnerable feeling than tottering forward through total darkness with your hands tied behind you, Nelson told himself, he’d just as soon not know about it. Every few steps he’d stop, listen. The only sounds in the bedroom were Nelson’s own ragged breathing and the furious pounding of his heart.

  All the silence meant, of course, was that Simon was waiting for him elsewhere in the house. But if so, Nelson began to realize, even if Simon was standing right outside the bedroom door, then his old friend had miscalculated for once. Simon must have failed to notice that the bedroom door was reinforced with steel to make it fireproof and furnished with a dead bolt, in the unlikely event an intruder ever succeeded in breaking into the house.

  Suddenly Nelson couldn’t get enough air; he felt as if his heart were about to burst inside him, spattering the inside of his chest cavity with blood and shredded muscle. Another panic attack? No—it was hope, a sensation far less familiar to Nelson. All he had to do, he told himself, was get that stout door between himself and Simon, throw the bolt, and there’d be no way Simon could get to him.

  Easier said than done. Shuffling out of the closet in what he desperately hoped was the direction of the door, Nelson tried to remember whether the dead bolt was set low enough for him to be able to reach it with his hands tied behind him. There wouldn’t be time to fumble around for it in any case, he realized—he’d have to locate, slam, and bolt the door all in one motion if he was to have any hope of keeping Simon on the other side. Which meant he needed to turn around and back toward it.

  Again, easier said than done. As Nelson executed a tentative about-face (turn too far or not far enough, he knew, and he’d be wandering around the bedroom, disoriented, until Simon came to fetch him) and began to inch backward toward the door, it occurred to him that at least he had learned the answer to his earlier question: there was indeed a more terrifying, more vulnerable feeling than tottering forward into the darkness.

  Nelson’s ciliary radar—the tiny hairs on the back of his arms and neck—whispered a warning just before his bound hands bumped against the back of the bedroom door. It was already closed, he realized, hope surging again—-and again, the sensation was nearly indistinguishable from panic. He slid his hands up and down along the crack of the door; at the apex of his reach his fingers brushed the cold iron of the dead-bolt fixture, but the bolt itself was too high for him to grasp. He hunched forward, wrenching his arms higher and higher up his back until his shoulders felt as if they were about to dislocate, until at last he was holding the little round knurl of the bolt between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.

  Working backward with his hands crossed behind him at the wrists was doubly disorienting; with his arms torqued painfully and his shoulders wrenched in their sockets until the shoulder blades felt as if they were sticking out like angel wings, Nelson finally managed to rotate the bolt upward, slide it into its socket, and rotate it down again, then collapsed on the floor, simultaneously exhausted and exhilarated. You did it, he started to tell himself, you—

  Then he knew. Nothing had moved in the bedroom, not a scrape, not a rustle, but all the same, he knew. “You’re in here, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, yes,” said a voice in the darkness.

  9

/>   Drought be damned, conservation be damned—Dorie wanted a shower, she wanted it hot, hot, hot, and she wanted it to last forever. She stripped off the pink scrubs one of the ER nurses had filched for her, stepped into the shower, and let ’er rip.

  It took ten minutes and several relatherings to rid herself of the stink, which was compounded by the reek of Missy’s cheap strawberry-scented bubble bath. Poor Missy, thought Dorie. The nurse had still been performing CPR on her when Dorie and Pender emerged from the basement; by the time the paramedics arrived to take over, Nurse Apple had nearly passed out from hyperventilation, and although the ambulance docs had kept the CPR going all the way to Alta Bates, nobody seemed surprised when she was declared DOA.

  It was just as well, though, Dorie decided—from what she had gathered about their relationship, Missy would probably have preferred death to being separated from her big brother for any length of time.

  The hot water ran out as Dorie finished rinsing the conditioner out of her hair. She stepped out of the shower, wrapped her hair in a bath-towel turban, dried herself off, dusted herself liberally with L’Air du Temps scented talcum powder—one of her few personal extravagances—and returned to the bedroom to begin a round of musical clothes. Dear Cosmo: What does a gal wear for an informal tête-à-tête with the man who saved her life, whom she might want to get involved with someday, but definitely not tonight, thank you very much, even though she’s already invited him to sleep over?

  Then she reminded herself that Pender had already seen her in the buff, under the least flattering conditions imaginable; after those hideous pink scrubs, could it really make any difference what she chose to wear now? She threw on some comfort clothes—roomy fleece sweatpants and an oversize Carmel Padres sweatshirt—and went down to the kitchen, where Pender was on his knees, scrubbing one-handed at the parquet.

  “What’d I tell you,” he said, climbing to his feet. His outfit—beret, rumpled polo, and plaid slacks that made his rear end look like a slip-covered sofa—reminded her that clothes really didn’t make the man—or the woman. “Good as new. Didn’t even strip the wax.”

  “Pender, you’re a prince.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “To put it mildly.”

  “How do you like your eggs?”

  “Sunny side up—like my personality.”

  “How ’bout a beer?”

  “They say it’s the perfect food.”

  “Glass?”

  “Naah.”

  “Man after my own heart.”

  The beer was Tree Frog dark ale, not a brand with which Pender was familiar. The food was perfect, the eggs neither dry nor runny, the bacon neither crisp nor burned. Pender told Dorie she could make breakfast for him whenever she’d a mind to.

  “And you can clean my kitchen floor whenever you want.” Dorie took a swig of Tree Frog—out of the bottle, of course. “Where do you think Simon is?”

  “Ain’t that the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question?” Pender sopped up yolk with a corner of toast. “You’ve known him for a while. Did he ever mention the names of any close friends, relatives, anybody who might hide him out? My guess is it’ll be someplace in the Bay Area—he’d have to have gotten that car off the road pretty quick.”

  “Nothing comes to mind. But they’re gonna catch him, right?”

  “What? Oh, sure. You bet.”

  “You don’t sound very convinced.”

  Pender looked up from his plate. “Scout, I’ve been chasing monsters for a long time.” There was a seen-it-all sadness in his soft brown eyes. “You tell me how much you want to hear.”

  “I’ve been hiding from monsters for a long time,” replied Dorie. “You tell me what you think I ought to know.”

  10

  While Nelson had been in the bedroom closet facing his demons, Simon had been in Nelson’s bathroom preparing to face his demon—singular. With every pass of Nelson’s electric clippers another piece of it had appeared in the mirror. Bzzz, there went the widow’s peak and the rest of the wavy silver hair. That much had been part of Plan B all along—Simon had come to identify so strongly with his handsome head of silver hair that cutting it off was the first thing that came to mind when he thought about disguising himself.

  But then, bzzz, there went the two-day stubble and bzzz, there went the mustache, and Simon was reminded that it had been in order to disguise the long, cruel upper lip he’d inherited from the Childs side of the family that he’d grown the stash in the first place.

  But a shaven head and face did not a demon make. It wasn’t until the eyebrows were gone that it really started to take shape. Even then the transformation into Grandfather Childs, who as a boy had suffered from an attack of scarlet fever so virulent it left him without a hair on his body, wasn’t complete until he’d finished the difficult task of clipping back the lashes.

  Luckily Nelson had a pair of safety-tipped (what else?) nail scissors. Leaning over the sink until his face was within inches of the mirror, his eyes tearing like a soap opera queen, Simon clipped the lashes as close to the lids as possible, then leaned back, and voilà, the pièce de résistance. While he’d never thought of his pale blue eyes as cold, once the lashes were gone, they were positively reptilian.

  Which would come in handy even after he finally left the shelter of Nelson’s house, Simon knew: not only wouldn’t the authorities be looking for a bald scalp, but no one would ever peer too long or too hard at the face under this chrome dome, not with eyes like these staring back at them.

  They even made Simon uncomfortable. He turned away from the mirror, bending down to rummage through the catchall storage space under the sink until he found some witch hazel to use as aftershave—he didn’t want to spoil the effect by dousing himself with Nelson’s Old Spice.

  He wasn’t surprised when Nelson refused to come out of the closet at first. Hey, the longer the better, thought Simon. Delayed gratification and all that. And once he saw that Nelson had fallen for the heavy-footsteps-down-the-hall-then-tiptoe-back-to-the-room ploy, he waited, still as a spider, to see if Nellie would actually try to lock the door.

  What did surprise him was that Nelson had figured it out so quickly, before Simon could spring his own surprise. But Simon was nothing if not resourceful when it came to the game. He helped Nelson up, led him over to the bed, and let him weep for a few minutes, until Nelson had a few endorphins pumping.

  Then, when he judged the time was right, he arranged the lighting and removed Nelson’s blindfold.

  11

  “I’m afraid that in this case, identifying Simon as our suspect was the easy part,” explained Pender, over another round of Tree Frogs. “His mistake was making your PWSPD Association disappear. As long as we thought it was legit, he’d have been just another member of the potential victim pool—at least until he’d been interviewed and his alibis checked out.”

  “Which wouldn’t have been nearly in time to save me,” said Dorie, who was at the sink washing the dishes. Couple of beers and another Vicodin, she was feeling no pain. “You know I owe you my life. Have I thanked you yet?”

  “Don’t get sentimental,” said the secret sentimentalist. “Like I said, that was the easy part. Now that he’s on the run, this thing could go flying off in any one of a dozen different directions, and I don’t just mean geographically. Personality like that, no telling what’s going to happen. Especially with his sister gone—God, I felt terrible about that.”

  “Her doctor said it could have happened any time.”

  “Yes, well, she saved my life—and she’s not even around for me to thank. Were they as close as they seemed?”

  “Closer.”

  “Think there was anything…” Pender put down his bottle and waggled his good hand iffily.

  Dorie shuddered. “I don’t know and I don’t want to know.”

  “Doesn’t matter—we can assume news of her death will come as quite a blow to a man who’s a
lready stressed-out to the max just from the strain of being a fugitive, and probably wasn’t that stable to begin with. So on the one hand, we might be dealing with a disorganized psychotic serial killer on the edge of snapping. Most likely outcome there is either suicide or suicide by cop. Soon, if it hasn’t happened already.

  “On the other hand, we might be dealing with a cunning, organized psychotic serial killer, now in a white-hot rage, with considerable resources, who has a plan, a false identity, some money stashed away, maybe a hideout someplace where they don’t ask too many questions. If that’s the case, there are so many ways this can go, I couldn’t handicap it if I tried. I can tell you that very few serial killers ever quit voluntarily. So if they haven’t caught him or found his body by the time we wake up tomorrow morning, we could be in for a long, bumpy ride.”

  “Do you think he might come after either of us?” asked Dorie, sitting across from Pender again.

  “Probably not. I can’t remember a case where an organized serial killer came after a victim a second time, unless they were related. As for him coming after me, that’s even less likely. Serial killers choose victims they can dominate and control. Cop killers are different. They have the assassin mentality, and as a rule of thumb, they generally don’t care which cop they kill. It’s rarely personal.”

  The plates were clean by now, the bottles empty. Dorie stifled a yawn. “Getting to be that time,” she said.

  “Definitely getting to be that time,” Pender agreed.

  “I aired out the guest bedroom. Nobody’s used it since…Good lord, since Simon and Missy stayed here.”

  “In June, right?”

  “In June. He was taking Missy on vacation to make up for having been away on some kind of…of…”She finished the sentence with a moan.

  “What?”

  “Some kind of business trip. It must have been Chicago—he must have just come back from killing the Rosen girl.” She shuddered. “I hope you don’t mind sleeping up there—I changed the linen.”