Messages, a Psychological Thriller

An insane mix of emotions crosses his face so quickly that Lacey feels nauseous trying to decipher them. Confusion, anger, embarrassment, and then…the embarrassment seems to melt into bashfulness, and James puts his head down, clasps his hands behind his back. A small smile forms on his lips, and then he looks up at her from under his eyelashes, coquettishly…and his smile becomes wider.

  “You found Sergeant Riddel’s file about me,” he says. It is a statement, not a question, but there is an undeniable thread of flirtatious amusement in his voice.

  “James…” she says, but that is all she can manage. She sits back in the chair, collapses back in it as her knees give out. Concern washes over James’ face, and he hurries around the desk to her, carefully stepping over the papers that have drifted like wayward feathers onto the carpet.

  “Lace, baby, are you okay?” he asks. He reaches for her hand, and she pulls it away, pulls it into her chest. She grasps it with her other hand, trying to cover the movement, make it seem as though that was what she’d intended to do anyway. Then she lowers her hands to her lap.

  James’ brows draw together but not in anger. He is perplexed. He looks around at the papers and then bends to retrieve the ones closest to him. He places them on the desk. Then he looks at Lacey. “You did read them, right?” The confusion breaks his voice, gives it an adolescent, upward twist.

  Lacey nods. She can’t tear her gaze away from his. She feels like a rabbit held in place by bright headlights, unable to save herself from onrushing doom.

  “Then…you understand…what happened.” James squints at her and tilts his head, questioningly. Lacey nods. A bare movement of her head once down, once up. She is aware that her mouth is open, her eyes nearly dry from not blinking, burning from the air.

  James shakes his head and sighs. He turns and starts around the desk, gathering the other papers. He brings them to the desk and pulls the folder over so he can order the papers back into the file.

  “You know, when I told Riddel that I wanted to tell you everything, he told me not to,” he says and then pauses in his paper shuffling to glance at her. “I hope I wasn’t wrong.”

  Lacey shakes her head, once left, once right, feeling hypnotized. “No…you weren’t wrong,” she says. Her voice is as faint as she feels. “Who…who is Riddel?”

  “Sergeant Riddel, of the Essex Police Force. He’s outside. I told him to give us some time. But you’ll meet him in a minute,” James says. He looks at her, and he is clear-eyed, calm.

  “He’s outside? He’s here?” Lacey says.

  James nods, a slight smile crossing over his features. “Yeah. He wants to meet you. Explain some more of this.” He indicates the file. “Everything that’s going on.”

  Lacey feels dazed, punch drunk. She shakes her head again. “But James, this is your…it’s your handwriting. You wrote this.”

  He frowns and glances at the papers in front of him. Then he nods, slightly. “It looks like my handwriting, I guess, a little. But I didn’t write it, Lace. Riddel did. He’s investigating the whole thing.” James looks at her, and his smile widens, but tears are gathering at the edges of his lower lids. He kneels and reaches for her, taking her hands in his. “Everything that’s been going on this past year…all the things I’ve been seeing that, quite frankly, I thought were signs of impending insanity…aren’t! There is something going on, and this proves it.” He pats the folder with one hand and then clasps her hands in his again, squeezing. “I should have said something sooner. I realize that now. But I was just so unsure…” the tears fall over his lashes and roll down his cheeks.

  Lacey feels a pull, and she shakes her head again. “Riddel is a real cop? He’s really investigating this whole thing?”

  James nods, his smile getting wider. “He’s helping me, Lace, so everyone can know the truth.”

  “But the Simonellis…they were murdered, James. You didn’t really have anything to do with that, did you?”

  He lowers his head but not before Lacey catches the barest hint of a smile cross his lips. Unless she imagined it. He is crying harder, nearly sobbing.

  “It was awful, Lacey, just terrible. That guy, William…he tried to kill me! I was in his garage, that’s true, but when he knew what I’d come there for…he just went crazy, and he tried to kill me, and I just struck back in self-defense, and then the old lady, she came out and stumbled or something…I’m not even sure, he might have pushed her…and she died…” He is crying much harder now, the words choking out of him. Lacey’s instinct is to pull him to her, to comfort him, but she resists it. She wants to believe him, she wants to but…

  “James, how did you know? That this…object…was in his garage? I don’t see how…”

  He smiles and squeezes her hands again. Then he wipes under his eyes and brushes his sleeve across his nose. He sits back on his haunches. “There were signs. Messages. I was led to it.”

  James’ irises are nearly black, shining brightly with refracted tears. He puts his hands on his thighs and straightens in one easy movement. Then he puts his hands on his hips, a small smile playing over his lips, one eyebrow cocking up slightly. “Want to see it?”

  Lacey looks up at him, still dazed, almost…almost believing. She wants so badly to believe. She nods.

  James’ smile gets wider, and he pulls her–chair and all–back from the desk. He bends over the middle drawer and opens it, forgetting to use his key–forgetting, in fact, that there is no key. That this drawer doesn’t lock and never has. He reaches to the back, fishing, fishing, and pulls his hand out, closed protectively over…something.

  James feels the heat in his palm, in the curve of his fingers. He sees everything coming to rights. He knows Laycee will be just as amazed as he was, as Riddel was. Laycee will see that everything is going according to plan. Then she can help him…finish it.

  He opens his hand.

  Lacey gasps and pushes herself further back in the chair. She is frozen, trembling in awe. Tears of joy spill down her cheeks, and James feels an overwhelming wave of love for her, for Riddel, for Archer, for the object…for everything…because it’s almost done now.

  Chapter 31

  Lacey had leaned slightly forward when James brought his hand from the desk. She feels her salvation and her ruination hanging in the space surrounding his closed fist. She looks into his calm, shining eyes. His grin widens, becomes a smile, then it overbalances and becomes a tight grimace…and he opens his hand.

  A small child’s toy–a tin top–lies rusty and dented in his palm. It had been William Simonelli’s when he was a child. He had not been an excessively sentimental man, but his mother had given him this toy, and William could remember playing with it for hours on end as she cooked, cleaned, talked with her girlfriends, served his father meals, and finally as she lay in bed, dying in her twenty-seventh year of life. He can remember spinning and spinning the top, listening as the doctor said ‘nothing more to do’ to his father. And he can remember holding the top in his pocket, his small fingers grasping it desperately as they lowered her casket into the ground. William had never been able to part with it, and it had spent the last forty or so years in his garage, in a special box on his workbench. He’d made the box by hand, putting it together with small, leftover strips of mahogany, and then polishing it until it glowed mellowly in the dim garage light. From time to time, he’d thought about giving it over to his children, but then he’d look at his children’s toys–cars and trucks, games, toy guns, toy horses, Barbies, tractors, Legos, coloring books, markers–and he’d consider the humble tin top and decide that might be a bad idea, after all. When he died, no one knew the top was missing because no one knew it existed except for Antoinella, and of course, Antoinella was dead, too.

  Lacey doesn’t know any of this, but she knows with final and unshakable surety that James has lost his mind. And she knows, too, that she is in deep, deep trouble.

  Tears roll down her cheeks as terror thrums through her body, tightening her muscles, pushi
ng her back in the chair. She glances up at James, the brief thought that maybe this, this is the punch line to his elaborate joke is wiped from her mind when she beholds his straining, grinning face. His eyes protrude, and his lips are stretched so wide over his teeth that she can see small splits where his skin is ripping. The tendons in his neck are tight, and deep shadows appear between them, making him appear lizard-like. His hair is disheveled, greasy, and pulled every which way. His shirt is spotted with stains, and his armpits are ringed where sweat had dried and run and dried again. She sees everything. She sees it all.

  His frantic gaze has been locked onto the rusty toy in his hand, but now his eyes shift to hers. His expression of a joy so profound that it has burned up his brain falters slightly, and he takes a short step toward her.

  “You see? You see now?” he asks, holding his hand higher, closer to her face. Lacey senses the impatience in his eyes and voice is one shaky step from tumbling into full-blown rage. She nods her head, still staring into his eyes, frozen in her terror.

  Concern and fear come into his eyes, and he almost looks like himself. “Lacey? Don’t be afraid…it won’t hurt you, I promise.”

  She nods again, her eyes still not leaving his, and now impatience draws his features down. “Lacey, dammit. What are you so afraid of? Look at it…it’s proof! Don’t you understand? It’s proof that…that…” His eyes close, and his free hand pinches the bridge of his nose. He pinches savagely, his forefinger and thumb seeming to disappear into the tight nest of skin as his brows pull down. His voice is furry, deep and quiet. “I don’t understand why you’re so…being so…stubborn about this. I said I had proof, and I show you proof, and you sit there like it’s…like it’s…something I made up! Something not real!” His voice has escalated into a shout, and he pulls his hand away from his eyes. There are red spots where he was pinching, and a small crescent of blood has appeared at the inner corner of his eye where his fingernail pierced the skin. Lacey watches as a drop of blood gathers and then rolls slowly from his eye, tracking the side of his nose and then rolling into the groove next to his nostril. She thinks she might be going crazy, too, and a small part of her wishes it were so. Wishes she could just believe with the same conviction James has. Because that would make it all true in a way, wouldn’t it?

  James sees the indecision in her face and relief softens his features. He wipes briefly at the blood tear and then glances distractedly at his red finger. “I know what else will convince you. I’ll go get Riddel…when you hear it from him, it will all make more sense. Then the three of us can go see Archer together.”

  He puts the top into his front pants pocket, carefully, reverentially, the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth. “I’m so afraid of breaking it,” he says and glances at Lacey, an embarrassed grin on his face. “I don’t know why, I mean…it must be indestructible…everything it’s gone through…all the pressure while it was hidden away, waiting for me…to find it.”

  He pats the outside of his pocket and then goes to the office doorway and turns to look at Lacey. “I’ll be back in just a sec, he’s right outside in my car. He’ll tell you. Everything is going to be fine,” he says and starts out the door. He hesitates and turns back again, looking at Lacey with consideration, his head tilted slightly. “I hope I didn’t make a mistake, Lay-cee, telling you all this. I mean, you wouldn’t…work against me, right? You love me too much to do something like that, don’t you, Lay-cee?”

  “I wouldn’t do anything against you, James,” Lacey says, trying to keep the tremor from her voice. “I believe you.” She shivers at the way he pronounced her name, drawing out the two syllables, almost mocking her.

  He smiles with relief and turns away, but she saw something else in his eyes, too, right before the relief…or at least, she thinks she saw it. Anger and disappointment. As though he wanted her to deny him everything.

  She hears the front door close, and she wills herself to leap from the chair, run down the hall, grab up her car keys, and fly through the front door. She imagines the safety of her car, locks clicked, engine racing as she jets out under the slowly rising gate…and where will she go? Anywhere, who cares where, just get going, go…

  The front door opens and closes, and her hands convulse on the chair arms, gripping them tighter. She’d had three minutes…and she’d wasted them by being a dumb shit. She hears footsteps in the hall–brisk and certain. Her mind is screaming at her, a deep primordial part of her brain pushing adrenalin into her system telling her to run, run, run…but her muscles and tendons and joints have locked so tightly that she is even beyond trembling. She sits, rigid and still, waiting to see who will come through the doorway.

  Chapter 32

  Henry had taken his mom’s Taurus and cruised back to the shop where he’d found the paper with Lacey’s address…but not her phone number. He is too keyed up to even think about going to sleep, and the deep sense of uneasiness has persisted. Now he is sitting on the shoulder of the road outside her apartment complex, feeling foolish.

  From this vantage point, he can see Lacey’s Mazda with a gray Impala parked next to it. But he is at least fifty feet from both and on the other side of the wrought-iron security fence that circles the entire complex.

  He taps his fingers lightly on the steering wheel, trying to understand the feeling that has brought him here. Probably he should just tell that cop from the hospital about the car and where the guy lives. Just be done with it. It’s not as though this chick is his responsibility in any way. But then he thinks about his mom’s assertion to the cop that it was an Impala that was driven by her attacker–Arch’s abductor. It’s such a common fucking car, though; even the Simonelli’s had one, for fuck’s sake. It didn’t really mean…

  His thoughts stop abruptly when the door to Lacey’s apartment opens and a man steps out. The apartment fronts and sidewalks are well-lit, but Henry couldn’t have said for sure if this is the same guy he saw the morning the Simonellis were killed.

  His fingers stop tapping, and he stills, watching the guy as he walks toward the Impala. The guy stops halfway, indecisive, and turns back toward the apartment. But then turns again and continues on to his car. He opens the passenger side door. He gestures to the empty seat. He gestures again and then puts a hand on his hip. Henry can see his mouth moving, but is too far away to hear anything he says. The guy points angrily back toward the apartment, mouth still working. Then his mouth closes, and he puts his hands on his hips, head tilted toward the passenger seat, as though he is listening to something from the empty space. He nods. He nods again. He puts his hand out in a ‘let’s shake’ gesture to the open air of the passenger seat. As the guy’s hand pumps once, twice, Henry feels fear wash over him. This guy is bat-shit fucking crazy.

  The guy closes the passenger side door and goes around to the driver’s side. He opens the door and climbs into the seat, closing the door behind him. Then Henry can only see a confused struggle, the dark of the parking lot making him doubt his eyes…is he climbing over into his own passenger seat? Yes, that is exactly what just happened. Now the guy is getting out of the passenger side. He turns and closes the door and proceeds around the back of the car to the driver’s side.

  Something about the guy’s demeanor has changed, and it strikes a chord with Henry. He is walking differently, slower and calmer, his feet hitting the ground with assured authority, his shoulders back and chest out. Christ, the dude’s acting like a fucking…

  He bends over the empty driver’s side window, his hand tilting back a nonexistent hat, looking like a pantomime of a cop asking for license and registration. Henry would have known that show anywhere.

  The guy stands at the window for a second longer, then nods and straightens. He turns on his heel and heads toward the apartment. Where Lacey is. Henry’s stomach tightens, and he actually grabs for his door handle before remembering that he has no way to get to her because of the security fence.

  He pulls his cell from his pocket and ru
ns his thumb over the numbers, thinking. He can’t call the police. He doesn’t know what that guy is doing or even for sure if Lacey is in there. Besides, he only met her today…the police might even turn this back around on him somehow…hit him up for stalking or something.

  He puts the phone back in his pocket and decides to just wait a while longer; see what happens. Probably nothing will happen. Then he’ll just go home and then tell the police about the Impala when he goes to the station tomorrow. It’s such a long shot anyway, that it has anything to do with the Simonellis’ murder or Archer’s disappearance.

  Henry sits back, his eyes on the apartment door, and waits.

  Chapter 33

  Lacey is still fixed to the chair, and when James walks back into the office, she lets go of her pent-up breath. “James…” she says, the ‘a’ drawing out as she starts to stand.

  “He’s out in the car, ma’am,” James says, coming to her, hand extended. “I’m Sergeant Riddel of the Essex Police. It’s good to meet you, Lacey; may I call you that? I’ve obviously heard a lot about you from James and…”

  “James?” Lacey’s voice is tiny, a mouse squeak, barely audible to her own ears.

  “Yes, ma’am, that’s right, he’s right out in the car. Waiting on us,” James says, and he is looking at her frankly, his eyes calm but very alert. He has lowered his arm, and now he crosses his hands at his back, his legs hip-width apart, head up and chest out. Parade rest.

  Lacey sees gray clouds at the edges of her vision. Small white stars are leaping in the clouds, crossing and crisscrossing over her vision. “I don’t understand,” she says, and she feels a wave of vertigo. The room begins to tilt up and over, and she tilts forward to compensate. James reaches out to steady her.

  “You okay, ma’am? You need to lie down? I know this is a lot to take in. It turned me around for a few days, too, I don’t mind telling you.” He smiles. It is a half-smile, wry and commiserating. He lends her an arm as she tries to lock her shaking legs.