Jesse doesn’t say anything. He just starts tinkering with the piano keys, punching out a one-fingered rendition of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” “Doc made me start taking lessons when I was six,” he says, running through the do-re-mi scale. “I hated it. My sister, Stacy, she’s really good. She can sing, too.” He plays a few notes that sound like the opening to something boring and classical and then, without warning, his fist comes crashing down on the keys in a loud, discordant sound that makes me jump. “When I’m with you I feel…” He stops and searches for the right word. “Confident,” he finally says, “like I know who I am and what I want. But when I’m at home it all goes to shit. I guess I’m just tired of fighting.”
“Then stop fighting. Be yourself and stop trying to impress people. It’s boring.”
“I’m working on it,” he says and slumps over the keyboard.
I’m figuring out the wording for a speech, which starts with something eloquent like, “You’re never going to get what you want if you don’t stop being such a lame-ass wuss,” when Jesse sits up and for the first time in days, our eyes really meet.
We don’t speak, but we don’t need to. The eye contact cuts through all the crap, leaving something deep and wordless hanging in the air between us. I know I have to stay away from Jesse to keep him out of danger, but I can’t lie to myself anymore and pretend I don’t care about him.
Jesse scoots the piano bench closer to me so our knees bump, and his fingertips graze mine. The touch is so soft it’s barely more than an energy, a prickle of current, but the nerve endings in my fingers go crazy, and I think of the butterfly effect, how the smallest occurrence can change the course of the universe.
I close my eyes and let my universe be changed.
Jesse traces circles on my palm, tickling my skin with his feather-light touch. Just as our fingers lock, my phone rings. I should ignore the obnoxious marimba ring tone, but the reminder of the outside world has already broken the spell.
I pull back my hand and answer.
“Hi, Faith,” a troubled voice says. “It’s Dr. Wydner. I got your message. I need to talk to you.”
“What about?”
“In person. The phone’s too risky. They might be listening.”
I turn from Jesse and press my cell to my ear. “What are you talking about? Who might be listening?”
“Meet me tonight. At the clinic. Seven o’clock.” He doesn’t wait for my answer. “Don’t use the front door. Call me on this number when you get here. I’ll tell you where to go.”
The line goes dead before I can say anything else.
Jesse shoots to his feet. “Who was that?” he demands.
“Nobody,” I mumble, staring at the red Call Ended words on the screen.
“Then why are you shaking?”
I look down. He’s right. My hands are shaking. Bastards. Totally against my will they’re giving me away. I jam my hands under my armpits and study my feet.
“It was my aunt,” I lie, whatever soul-mate connection we were having a minute ago already light years away. “Something happened…to Felix.”
“Felix?”
“Yeah. Her cat. He…ate chocolate and he’s having some kind of seizure thing. She’s freaking out. I’ve gotta go help her. She loves that cat. He’s like…the child she never had. Well, I guess I’m like the child she never had, but…so is the cat.” Stop rambling, Faith. Shut up and get going. “So, I have to go…to the vet. She needs me. So, yeah, I’ll be going.”
“Faith,” Jesse says, reaching for my hand again. “I—”
“Forget it,” I whisper, pulling back from his touch. “Please.”
I push past Jesse and race up the aisle. He calls after me, but I don’t hear what he says.
The door is already swinging shut behind me.
Twenty
At six that evening, I scribble a note to Aunt T telling her I’ve gone to the library to study, then take off to meet Dr. Wydner. By the time I reach the corner of Twenty-third and Jefferson, the smaller shops have been gated and put to rest for the night. The only light flickers from the distant skyscrapers that puncture the skyline. I’m not sure if it’s my nerves projecting onto the environment or the environment messing with my nerves, but something tells me to turn back. I push away the thought and punch Dr. Wydner’s number.
“Are you here?” he blurts before I can say hello.
“I’m out front.”
“Did anyone follow you?”
“What? No…I don’t think so.” I shudder and look over my shoulder suddenly paranoid that someone is watching me from behind one of those blackened windows.
“Good. Come around the west side. By the parking lot. There’s a back door in the alley. I’ll meet you there.”
I cross the empty parking lot and step into the alley. Steam rises from a vent, carrying with it a sour smell like bad breath. I cover my mouth and nose with my hand as I hurry toward the sliver of light where Dr. Wydner waits in the doorway. His appearance has taken a dive since I saw him a week ago. His perfectly coiffed hair has gone flat. Dark circles swell beneath his eyes, and there’s a papery, washed out look to his weathered face. He seizes my wrist and pulls me into the clinic.
“This way,” he grumbles. He hurries through a small room lined with shelves of medications, glass beakers, vials and syringes, then through a door leading to the nurse’s station, and finally down a corridor, lit only by the glowing red of the exit sign at the opposite end.
When we reach his office, he lets go of my arm and scurries into the room. I stop at the door. The pictures of his daughter are gone. The drawers of his file cabinet are open. Papers litter his desk, and a big brown duffle bag sits on the floor.
“Are you going someplace?”
Instead of answering, he hands me a notebook-size yellow envelope. “Take this. It’ll explain.”
I reach for the envelope. “Explain what?”
“It was too risky to put in the mail,” he says, evading my question again. “Don’t tell anyone you have it. It isn’t safe.”
“What’s—”
He silences me with a wave of his hand. “I don’t have all the answers. There wasn’t time. The doctor knows I’m suspicious and that I have information. I have to get out of here.” I try to interrupt, but he keeps talking. “You can figure out the rest. Go home. Look at what’s in there and then go to the police. I can’t go to them after what I’ve done.”
“What did you do?” I ask, my voice rising, a hard chill trembling down my spine. “You’re not making sense. What doctor? What information? Why are you giving this to me?”
“You remind me of my daughter,” he says, moving on to the next subject like a rambling mad man, and for a moment I think that’s all this is, the delusions of a lunatic, and I’ve been snared in his web because something about me reminds him of his loss. “She had brown eyes, too, and you’re smart like she was. I can tell.” He dumps the contents from a drawer into his duffle bag and yanks open another with an erratic jerk of his hand. The light from his desk lamp slices his face into shadowy angles. “I knew something wasn’t right when I took this job, but I was paid not to ask questions. I needed that treatment for Heather. But after you came to see me and the second patient died, I couldn’t ignore it any longer.”
“Ignore what?” I plead. “Is this about side effects?”
“I did it for my daughter,” he repeats, deaf to my question. “But now she’s dead, and I don’t care about their drug or their money anymore.” He stops talking and looks at me as if seeing me for the first time. “I’m sorry about your mother.”
“What the hell is going on?” I explode in frustration. “You call me down here and mumble all this—”
“Shh!” He freezes like a mouse in the shadow of an owl and puts his finger to his lips. “Did you hear that?”
“No,” I whisper, my gut knotting with fear. “I didn’t hear anything.”
“There it is again.”
This time I do hear it. The clang of metal on metal. A door being forced open. Footsteps. Dr. Wydner turns off his lamp. We stand in the terrible pitch of night, waiting.
The sound of breaking glass shatters the silence.
In one swift move, Dr. Wydner lunges for me. He grabs my shoulders, throws me against a wall, and clamps his hand over my mouth before I can scream. My only thought is this was a trap and he’s going to kill me. I beg with my eyes, even though I know he can’t see me.
A second later he uncovers my mouth. I gasp for air.
“Stay here,” he hisses. “Don’t move.”
“Wait!” I cry, but he’s already gone.
I stand in the dark with my body pressed to the wall. When Dr. Wydner doesn’t return, I clutch the envelope in one hand and feel my way through the dark with the other until I’ve crossed the room and reached the door. I peer out into the hallway and listen. I don’t hear anything, so I slip out of the office into the eerie red glow and start inching down the hall.
I’ve taken about three steps when I hear murmurs.
“Dr. Wydner?” I call in a strangled voice.
No answer.
I try to call out again, but my voice sticks in my throat. My blood pounds in my ears. I scrape my palms along the rough textured wall and feel my way through the shadows. I’m half way to the waiting room when the murmurs turn to shouts. Something slams against a wall, and a second later Dr. Wydner runs out of the back room and races past the filing cabinets and computers toward me.
Faith!” he shouts. “Get—”
But before he can finish the thought, an explosion pierces the air. Shock waves ripple through my body. My eardrums split. It’s not until I can hear again that I realize I’m screaming.
The white walls behind where Dr. Wydner stood are splattered red. Terror burns my lungs. I order my feet to move, but I’ve managed just one small step when a tall, lanky figure emerges from the back room and stops in the entrance to the nurses’ station. The muted light from behind casts the form in silhouette. But even so, I know who it is.
The Rat Catcher raises a gun and points it at me.
I have just enough time to think how ironic it is for a junkie’s daughter to get killed in a methadone clinic when the gun goes off. I fall to my knees, cocooned for the second time in temporary deafness.
As I grope my body, feeling for a bullet wound, I realize I’m not dead. I’m not even hurt. I’m not floating through a tunnel toward white light, and no deity intervened to save me—unless you consider Jesse a deity, because somehow he’s come to be standing where the file cabinet had been. And somehow the file cabinet is on its side with all its drawers open. Plaster rains down around me from where the bullet hit the ceiling. The Rat Catcher is on the floor in front of the file cabinet, and behind him, in the doorway leading to the back room, Dr. Wydner’s twisted body lies in a pool of blood.
My brain tries to catch up and connect the dots, but command central has a short circuit. My only thought is the gun. The Rat Catcher isn’t holding it and neither is Jesse. As the Rat Catcher struggles to his feet, his burning eyes focused on me, one thing is perfectly clear: If he finds the gun, he won’t miss his target a second time. The survival instinct every wild thing is born with kicks into action. I jump to my feet and do what millions of years of evolution have taught me: run.
The back room is the fastest way out, but the Rat Catcher is blocking the way.
“This way!” I shout, motioning Jesse to follow. It takes him about two seconds to reach my side.
We run down the hall and make it into the waiting room. I don’t have to turn to know the Rat Catcher is behind us. His fingers claw the back of my head and grab my hair. I scream as he jerks me back toward him and locks a muscular arm around my neck. I struggle against the strength of him, biting, kicking, and thrashing any part of me that will move.
Jesse throws a punch, but his fists are nothing for the Rat Catcher. He drives his elbow into Jesse’s stomach. Jesse goes down with a groan. The grip on my neck tightens and my mind goes dark, but for a tiny point of flickering light. I’m not sure if my eyes are open or closed, if I’m alive or dead, but the light gets brighter and I see my mother. Keep fighting, Faith, she tells me. Don’t give up.
With sixteen years of hurt and anger fueling my muscles, I twist my shoulders as hard as I can. A scream like thunder rips out of me, and I yank free from the Rat Catcher’s grip. In one fluid move, I raise my foot and blast the steel toe of my boot into his groin. The Rat Catcher’s legs buckle and he drops without a sound.
I grab Jesse and pull him to his feet. We make it across the room before the Rat Catcher can get up and stop us. As we throw open the door, a deafening high pitch sound pierces the night. We’ve triggered the alarm. Any second the police will be here.
I glance over my shoulder as we flee, just in time to see the Rat Catcher rise and limp out of the clinic into the black night.
Twenty-one
People trickle into the street, but they’re drawn to the methadone clinic, not to us, and nobody notices two shadowy figures racing through the dark, away from the crime.
“Holy shit!” Jesse cries when we reach his car and scramble inside. He turns the key, but the three-hundred-dollar beast just sputters and dies. “Fuck! Come on!” he shouts and turns the key again. This time the engine sparks to life. Jesse floors it and peels out onto Twenty-third.
My stomach roils as he blows through a yellow light and screeches around a corner. I roll down the window and heave painfully against my bruised throat, but nothing comes out.
Jesse glances from the rear view mirror to me. “You okay?”
I feel around my chest and neck, then take a few deep pulls of air to confirm, yes, I can breathe, and no, I’m not about to die. Breathing hurts, but the air goes in and out, and I seem to be able to swallow and do all the normal functions, so I nod. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with me. No permanent physical damage anyway. Jesse, on the other hand, I’m not so sure about—he’s sweating, his fingers tremble on the wheel, and his face has turned a shade of white that makes a vampire look tan.
He glances out the rear view mirror again. “I don’t think he’s following us.”
“I don’t think so either,” I say, rolling up the window and locking the door. “But what the hell was the Rat Catcher doing at the clinic? He’s a drug dealer. What does he have to do with Dr. Wydner?”
“I don’t know,” Jesse says, hands trembling. “But we have to go to the police.”
“No way,” I burst, remembering Officer Varelli’s words: someone like you. “Not when I was at a methadone clinic after hours, and the only person who could be an alibi for why I was there is dead, so gee, I guess it looks like maybe I broke in and killed the guy.”
“Then where should we go?”
“I don’t know. I can’t go home. The Rat Catcher knows where I live.” The words have hardly escaped my lips when a new fear surges through me: Aunt T. I find my phone, still somehow buried in the recesses of my bag, and punch her number.
Come on, answer.
She picks up on the third ring.
“Hi, it’s me,” I blurt. “You have to listen. Where are you?”
“I’m home. What’s wrong? Are you—”
“You’re not safe. I’ll tell you everything. I promise. But please, something really bad is going on. I’ll explain later. Just get out of there.”
“Faith, what are you talking about? What story are you making up this time? ” I hear the eye rolling in her voice, the distrust.
“It’s not a story. I promise. Just go someplace else.” I’m begging now, groveling for her to leave before the Rat Catcher can find her and…I don’t let myself finish the thought.
“Okay. Calm down.” Aunt T doesn’t sound scared. If anything she sounds annoyed. I picture her lounging on the leather couch, a glass of wine in hand, her stocking feet stretched on the coffee table. “You’re acting crazy. Just tell me if you’re okay.”
“I’m fine,” I insist as I pull down the visor and examine the purplish bruise starting to form above my collarbone. “Just go.”
“Go where?”
“To Sam’s. Anywhere. It doesn’t matter.”
“Faith, I just got home. I thought you were studying. What’s this—”
“Listen to me!” I shout, cutting her off. “The stuff I told the police was all true. I can’t explain now, but I will. I promise, but you have to leave.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll go to Sam’s, but please, you’re scaring me. Where are you?”
“I’m on the move. I’ll call you later.”
I hang up before she can say protest, then turn off my phone and press my palms to my eyelids. My mother’s face flickers again into focus, but this time she’s not so real. It’s just the pixels of my imagination painting the picture of what I want to see. I swallow and the dots break apart and reconfigure. Now it’s Dr. Wydner painted in my mind’s eye. His broken body. His spilled blood. His eyes. His face. His words: Take this. It’ll explain…. It was too risky to put in the mail…. That’s why you had to come here.…
My eyes jerk open. The envelope! I’d forgotten all about it. I reach into my bag. It’s not there. I kick at the empty soda cans, books, and papers littering the floor. I turn my pockets inside out. Finally, I dump everything out of my bag.
“Oh my god, Jesse. Dr. Wydner gave me an envelope. He said it would explain everything. It’s not here. We have to go back. I—”
“You mean this?” Jesse reaches into his coat and pulls out a yellow envelope tucked into the waistband of his jeans. He tosses it onto my lap with the rest of the clutter. “I saw you drop it. I grabbed it when the alarm went off. I thought the Rat Catcher was going to…” His voice chokes, and he doesn’t finish the sentence.
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