Twice: A Novel

by Lisa Unger

  The hole yawned beneath her and everyone around her had disappeared. She felt like she was standing at the gates of hell, about to be pulled from the solid earth into a place of misery. And its pull was almost magnetic.

  “Lydia.” She heard Jeffrey’s voice as if through glass. She felt his hand on her shoulder and she spun around to face him.

  “Easy, tiger,” he said with a smile, and the world came rushing back. “Are you okay?”

  “Why is everybody always asking me that?” she snapped, walking away past them and out of the room into the cool gray basement hallway. She leaned against the wall and rested her head against the stone wall. The pain throbbed again in her side. Slight but definitely not a good thing. She put her head in her hands and rubbed her eyes. When she looked up again, Jeffrey was standing before her.

  If Jed McIntyre was the embodiment of all things ugly, wrong, and bad in the universe, then Jeffrey was all things good. Since the night they met, he had always been to her something just shy of a superhero. When he’d nearly been killed after taking a bullet in pursuit of a child killer on a Bronx rooftop, she realized he was just a man. But instead of that making him seem less to her, it had made him more precious. It had also allowed her childhood feeling of hero-worship for him to mature into love. Part of her still believed that he was faster than a speeding bullet, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Part of her would always believe that.

  “We’re going home,” he said.

  “What? No. I want to see where the doorway leads.”

  “Dax will stay. He’ll call with any developments.”

  “But—” she protested. It sounded weak even to her own ears.

  She let him put his arm around her shoulder and lead her toward the elevator. She leaned into him, accepting the warmth and comfort that washed over her. She was going to kick his ass, for acting like a vigilante, for scaring the life out of her, for just being a cowboy. But that could wait a little while.

  Her head was twisted unnaturally to the right, her eyes were wide, and her mouth had frozen in a circle of surprise and fear. Her arms were flailed out to her sides and her legs were bent as though she were jumping for joy. Her eyes seemed to glow even in the darkness. Lying there on the cold dirty ground, she looked as though life had just left her, discarded her as if she’d never been worthy of drawing breath.

  Rain stood over Violet’s body and was sorry. Sorry that she’d led such a hard life and sorry that it had ended in such an ugly way. Some people had heard him scream in anger when he found her body lying broken and bleeding not far from where The Virus lived or had lived. He could hear them now, shuffling up behind him, gasping as they saw Violet on the ground. Someone started to cry, but mostly they were silent. Tragedy struck here almost every day; people didn’t live long lives in the tunnels. No one was surprised to stumble upon a dead body.

  They came to call him Rain because of a line that De Niro said in Taxi Driver. “Thank God for the rain to wash the trash off the sidewalks.” He’d done that in a small way down here, he knew that. People depended on him because they needed order. Even in this place, people wanted to feel safe.

  He felt them crowding in behind him and knew they were waiting for him to say something, to make it okay somehow. But he was momentarily at a loss for words. He’d depended on Violet as much as anyone else down here had, for motherly advice, encouragement, or just a sounding board. And now that she was gone, he felt true grief. More grief, in fact, than when his own mother, a junkie and a whore, had died what seemed like a lifetime ago. He fought tears, kept his back turned to those that had gathered around him and Violet.

  He blamed himself for this. He should have taken care of the problem right away. Now they were all in trouble. Whether it was The Virus or the cure, they were in danger of having the world they created exposed and shattered. To hell with the “rules.” Who were they kidding anyway? There were no rules down here. It was as lawless a place as existed on earth.

  He turned to the people who gathered behind him and felt their eyes on him.

  “We’ll find who did this,” he said, his voice deep and resonating with conviction. There was a murmured noise of agreement. Rain thought of Dax Chicago and Jeffrey Mark and the threat they made. He shrugged inside. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

  chapter thirteen

  The silence between them was heavy as Lydia lay on the couch staring up at the ceiling and Jeff made a salad in the kitchen while they waited for their pizza to arrive. From where he stood at the counter, he could see into the sunken living room and he watched Lydia idly twirling a strand of blue-black hair, looking up at the tiny halogen track lights that ran the length of their Great Jones Street loft. He wondered, as he tossed tomatoes, avocado, onions, and cilantro over baby greens, what was going on in that head of hers. They’d hopped a cab home and had been skirting the events of the day, agreeing on dinner and saying little else.

  Lit by the orange glow of three pendant lamps hanging over the black granite island, the terra-cotta tile floor, the wood cabinets with their stainless steel fixtures, the kitchen was a warm and cozy room. Like everything in the apartment they had designed it together, paying attention to every detail of the home they would share. When they bought the duplex last year, they got rid of most of their old furniture and belongings, keeping only what meant most to them.

  “New beginnings demand new objects,” Lydia had declared. And Jeffrey had agreed. He’d never developed attachments to things anyway. He’d never had much of a home life, so he’d never spent much time on the East Village apartment he’d owned since he left the FBI. He’d started his private investigation firm from there, sleeping on a pullout couch in the back bedroom. In all the years he’d lived there, his apartment had remained almost empty of furniture. He found the only possessions that meant anything to him were his mother’s engagement ring, his father’s old service revolver, and a closetful of designer clothes.

  Lydia’s apartment on Central Park West had looked like it belonged on the cover of House Beautiful. Sleek, modern, impeccably decorated, but, Jeffrey thought, totally cold and impersonal. “You live in someone’s idea of the most gorgeous New York apartment,” he’d commented once. She’d sold it as is, furniture and all, to some software designer, just months before the dotcom bomb. Jeffrey sold his apartment, too, throwing in the pullout couch and rickety kitchen table and chairs. They both made a killing and then bought the three-bedroom duplex.

  A metal door with three locks opened from Great Jones Street into a plain white elevator bank. A real Old New York industrial elevator with heavy metal doors and hinged grating lifted directly into the two-thousand-square-foot space. By New York standards it was palatial. The cost was exorbitant, of course, as it was New York City ultra-chic, shabby-cool. But Lydia had declared it home the minute they stepped off the elevator onto the bleached wood floors. The private roof garden, which was at least a story higher than most of the other downtown buildings, sealed the deal. From the garden, they could see the whole city. At night it was laid out around them like a blanket of stars, which was a good thing, since you can’t see many actual stars in New York City. Now it was home, the place in the world they shared.

  “So,” he said, putting the salad on the table and walking over to her. “How did you figure out where we were? Ford told you?”

  “Not exactly,” she said, looking at him. He lifted her feet and sat on the end of the couch, placing them on his lap. She told him about their interview with Jetty, what he’d told her.

  “Ford just looked so white, so guilty when Jetty mentioned the tunnels, that it just clicked for me that’s where you were. I can’t believe you guys took off on me like that. How could you, Jeffrey?”

  He shrugged and looked over at her. “I didn’t see another way. Would you have been okay with it? With us going down there?”

  “Hell, no. You were insane to do that. What if something happened to you down there? I should have been with you
.”

  “Exactly my point,” he said, his blood pressure rising at her stubbornness. “You’re pregnant. Will you get that through your thick head?”

  “I’m pregnant,” she said, pulling her feet from his lap and sitting up. “I’m not made of glass.” They regarded each other for a moment and then she said, “Fine. You shouldn’t have gone down there, either. You should have let Dax go. Or called the FBI. But you shouldn’t have gone off like that, not even telling me anything. It’s not fair.”

  He nodded. She was right and he was sorry he’d frightened her. But he couldn’t say he wouldn’t have done it the same way again. So he said nothing at all, just looked down at the floor.

  “I mean, what were you going to do when you found him? Bring him in?”

  Again, there was nothing he could say. They both knew he and Dax had had no intention of cuffing Jed McIntyre and putting him back into custody. It was as if, because he’d managed to escape once, Jeff would never be able to sleep again until Jed McIntyre was dead. As long as he lived, Lydia would be in danger. And Jeffrey just couldn’t live with that.

  “No matter how you look at it, Jeff, it’s murder. Are you a murderer?”

  The word sounded as harsh and as ugly as it was and something inside him lurched. He looked at her face and she was pale and drawn. Her eyes shone with a wetness that licked at her lower lashes. That word on her lips felt like an indictment and he felt a sick shame inside.

  “Not yet,” he answered, not meaning it to sound as glib as it did.

  She looked at him with an expression that was somewhere between worry and disappointment. The buzzer rang and Jeff got up to answer it. “Who is it?” he called, depressing the talk button.

  “It’s me,” came Dax’s unmistakable voice. “And I’ve got a pizza here. Though I don’t know what you two are gonna eat.”

  “The tunnel went down about twelve feet, then out another two hundred, and then split into three separate passages. It’s going to take a couple of men and a lot of man-hours to follow each of them and see where they lead. Not a fun job, as you well know,” said Dax between gigantic bites of pizza. Lydia counted, and it took him a total of four mouthfuls to finish one slice. Jeff had called to order another after Dax polished off three pieces in under ten minutes. “And there was no bloody way I was going down there again. Not after our little adventure today.”

  “So why don’t you tell me about this little adventure?” said Lydia, looking at Jeff. “I never did get to hear all the details.”

  “It was bloody awful,” said Dax. He ran down the highlights as Lydia watched him, eyes wide. She managed to nibble at her salad a little as he talked, but she’d lost her appetite. She’d been ravenous just minutes before Dax arrived.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you two were full of shit,” said Lydia, when he’d finished. “Did this Rain ever tell you who you saw down there?”

  “No,” said Jeff, remembering the specter that had seemed to melt from the tunnel walls.

  “I can’t believe people live like that,” said Dax, as though he resided in a clapboard house with a white picket fence, two kids, and a dog.

  “It seems like there’s more than one gator in the sewers,” said Jeffrey, thinking about how strange it was that the tunnels beneath New York City held Jed McIntyre and possibly some of the answers to the Ross case, as well.

  “So now we know how someone else could have gotten into the building the night Richard Stratton was murdered,” said Lydia, shifting the pieces around in her head.

  “Yes and no,” said Dax.

  “Right,” answered Jeff, knowing where he was going. “Someone from the inside had to move the dryer, otherwise whoever wanted in couldn’t open the trapdoor.”

  “So it had to have been either Julian or Eleanor on the tape,” said Dax.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” said Lydia as though she’d already given it some thought. “The person who snuck in there had to be really small to avoid the camera. And someone else had to turn it off from behind the desk upstairs. If the camera was still on, it would have captured the dryer being slid forward.”

  “So two people, then?”

  “Definitely two people.”

  “Eleanor and Julian in on it?” said Dax.

  “Or maybe—” said Jeff, looking at Lydia.

  She finished his sentence. “The twins.”

  Sometimes in love, arguments are better dropped. No resolution is in the offing and to continue belaboring the point inevitably causes more damage than understanding. Lydia and Jeffrey had allowed their disagreement to come to bed with them, and though Jeffrey slept soundly, Lydia lay awake staring at a small water stain that had just made its debut in the ceiling above them.

  After Dax left, they’d tried to continue the discussion they’d been having before he arrived. But there was no understanding to be reached. Jeffrey apologized for frightening her, but that’s as far as he went, leaving Lydia with the uneasy feeling that if the opportunity presented itself, he’d do it again. She looked over at his sleeping form and felt an odd distance from him. She felt angry at him, and helpless. She quashed the urge to nudge him awake and fight with him until she felt better.

  She was conscious of the street noise from Lafayette below them, cars speeding, the general hum that was a million conversations, electricity through wires, trains rushing through tunnels, whatever combination of myriad sounds. She’d never imagined the parallel universe that existed beneath them. Naturally, she’d heard the stories somewhere in the periphery of her consciousness. But it had never seemed real to her. Now she had to contend with the idea of a netherworld just a few feet beneath her, like the first layer of hell where her nightmare and Julian Ross’s as well stalked. The thought made her shiver.

  The hem she’d seen in the video, a dark color patterned with little white hearts, had impressed her as something a child would wear. That was how it came to her mind that possibly the twins had let someone into the building. It seemed a little far-fetched, after she’d thought about it, but not out of the question. The how and why would take some figuring out. She’d see Eleanor and the twins tomorrow. Ford had said he’d work on a warrant to search the children’s rooms and find the nightgown. He couldn’t remember what the little girl had been wearing the night their father was killed. He’d promised to think about it and swing by in the morning to take Lydia up to Haunted.

  She thought about getting up and searching the Internet for more information on Haunted. But she felt sleep tugging at the back of her eyes and the thought of putting her bare feet on the cold wood floor beneath her was enough to deter her. She shifted to her side and moved in closer to Jeffrey, his body heat a magnet she couldn’t resist. She closed her eyes and curled up tighter beneath the covers. She hadn’t felt the pain in her side again since earlier in the evening and she’d done a good job convincing herself it was gas or something. She closed her eyes and sleep came for her.

  It took her off into a warm blackness. She dreamed that she was on a tiny wooden rowboat with only one oar. In a narrow stone tunnel, the current of a bloodred river swept the boat along and she had to hold the sides to steady herself. All around her she could hear screams, but she saw nothing except the walls of the tunnel and the river beneath her. She placed a finger in the water and pulled it back to find her hand dripping with blood. And at the sight of it, she was torn with the ache of a loss so profound that she felt she might die from it. She didn’t know what was gone, only that it had been so precious and she so unworthy. And then there was the mocking laughter of madmen, echoing against the walls. It surrounded her and she couldn’t be sure whether she was moving toward its source or away.

  chapter fourteen

  Haunted, New York was every bit as bleak and even uglier than Lydia had imagined it would be. The gray sky seemed committed to gloom and the trees here had already shed their leaves. Winter branches reached gnarled and high and the ground looked as cold and dead as a grave. Even
the weathered and beaten old sign that read WELCOME TO HAUNTED looked as though the sun had never shone on it. Someone had spray-painted RUN WHILE YOU CAN across the top. Lydia wondered if anyone would bother to repaint or replace it.

  Lydia sat in the front seat beside Ford, with Jeff in the back of the old Taurus.

  “Ford, why don’t you get a new car? This is a piece of shit,” said Lydia when he had picked them up on Great Jones Street a few hours earlier. In spite of a restless sleep, she was feeling stronger than she had last night. The daylight made the events of yesterday seem surreal and far away. And she left them there, temporarily putting Jed McIntyre out of her mind.

  “I take offense at that. Just because something looks like shit doesn’t mean it is shit,” he replied, looking in the rearview mirror and tamping down an errant hair as they climbed into the car. “Meanwhile, I’m lucky it’s running at all the way you drove it yesterday. I’m surprised the engine didn’t fall out.”

  “You let her drive?” asked Jeff. “You shouldn’t let her drive when she’s angry.”

  “I’m a very good driver,” said Lydia indignantly.

  “Yeah, I’m sure that’s what the monster truckers think, too.”

  She gave him a look to let him know he was still on her shit list and would be there until further notice.

  “So, what happened last night?” she said, turning to Ford.

  “Not much after you left. Forensics showed up, did their thing … obviously, there were a lot of different prints, fibers, hairs down there. No way to know if any of it will mean anything. However, no prints on the ladder rungs or on the door handle. Wiped clean. We got men down in the tunnels seeing where they lead. At least we know now that someone could have gotten into the building without anyone seeing. That’s good news for Julian Ross. Of course, it raises a lot more questions for us.”