Precipice

by Tom Savage

  “One of my patients showed me how to do that,” he said, grinning. “Never mind what I was treating him for.”

  “She’ll know we’ve been in here,” Margaret said.

  “No,” he said, pointing. “When you want to close it, just depress this spring lock at the top here with a card or a knife and slide the drawer back into place.”

  She nodded distractedly, unable to conceal her anxiety.

  They stood there, leaning forward, staring down at the large, heavy volume bound with tasseled gold rope that lay inside. He reached down and slowly pulled it out. He held it up and opened the cover as Margaret peered over his shoulder.

  The first twenty pages or so were photographs: her parents, Margaret, a man and a woman whom Margaret identified as the girl’s maternal grandparents. Herself as a baby: studio portraits, Christmas snapshots, in a mall with her mother, on a sailboat with her parents and Margaret, cradled in her father’s arms. Taped to one page, between photos, was a tiny lock of pale gold hair. Her first steps, with parents grinning proudly. On a pony at the age of three or four, with Bert’s steadying hand on her little leg. A birthday party: blowing out five candles, watched by several other delighted children. A final shot of her between her smiling parents in front of a pretty house. She would have been about six. . . .

  Then Dr. Stein turned the page.

  “Oh, dear God,” Margaret whispered. She shut her eyes tightly, turned away, and went to sit on the edge of the bed.

  He stared down at the clippings, aware of the yellowing paper, the screaming headlines, and the strong odor of rubber cement.

  “FIFTH ROBBERY—WOMAN DEAD!” the first headline proclaimed, followed by, in smaller letters, “Third Victim of Islip Burglar. Mailman’s Grim Discovery. Child Attacked, Hospitalized.”

  The following pages were a veritable history, every printed word on the subject, accompanied by photographs of the girl with her head bandaged, Madeleine in life and death, the postal employee who’d found them the next morning, and the shocked, devastated Bert. “SEARCH CONTINUES.” “HUSBAND OF ROBBERY VICTIM BREAKS DOWN AT INQUEST.” “PETERSEN CHILD HOME FROM HOSPITAL.” “ISLIP SUSPECT DETAINED, RELEASED.” This last clipping included a picture of a huge, malevolent-looking black man flanked by officers.

  It had gone on for weeks, and she had photocopies of every mention, culled from libraries and newspaper morgues.

  The last entry in the family tragedy was another headline, from about six months later. There was a large reproduction of the photograph of the happy family in front of the house, another of Bert alone, and photos of the sailboat—unmanned, its tiny dinghy trailing behind—being towed into a harbor. The headline read “ISLIP ROBBER’S LATEST VICTIM. PETERSEN HUSBAND APPARENT SUICIDE.” The smaller lines continued, “Boat Found Floating off Virginia Coast. Anchor Missing. Searching for Body. Left Note to Daughter.” They had photographed the note, found in the boat’s cabin, pinned to a table with a small knife. “Darling,” it read, “please forgive me. Be brave for me. Mommy and I will see you in Heaven. Daddy.”

  The doctor looked over at Margaret. “Where’s the original of Mr. Petersen’s suicide note?”

  She winced. “Among my papers, in a safety-deposit box at my bank. She can have it when I’m gone.”

  He nodded and turned the page.

  And stared.

  A chill crept slowly up his spine as he studied the rest of the pages of the album. More yellowing clips, some copies and some cut from actual newspapers. Sensational headlines, shocking photographs of pain and suffering and death. One violent image after another. Other, unrelated cases from all over the country. Several pages devoted to one particular case ten years ago in Hawaii, uncannily similar to the Petersen affair. As in Islip, there had been a rash of local burglary/murders, culminating in an incident involving a well-known socialite. The husband had returned home to find his wife murdered. The clippings included photos of the dead woman in a pool of blood and the grieving husband with his blank face emptied by shock. And exactly as in Islip ten years before, the perpetrator or perpetrators had escaped.

  Clippings from Louisiana and Wyoming and Arizona and several other states. Break-ins, assaults, murders. Case after case: some solved, some open, many involving whole families. A grim, relentless obsession.

  He shut the album, placed it on the desk, and went to stand over the woman who sat on the bed. “Have you ever seen that scrapbook before?”

  “No. What’s in it, aside from—what I saw?”

  He waved a hand. “Other cases, not unlike her own. Not related. I think she uses the clippings as a reminder, as a fantasy of some sort. To prove she’s not alone, that what happened to her happens to a lot of people. I doubt she’d ever commit violence, considering her own experience of it.”

  The woman slowly raised her eyes and regarded him thoughtfully. There was a troubled expression on her face.

  “Doctor,” she said quietly after a long moment of deliberation, “I think I should tell you something. Something I’ve never told anyone else.”

  He watched her face, waiting.

  Margaret looked down at the blue-bedspread, apparently unable to continue eye contact with him. Her voice was a whisper. “Are you familiar with the particulars of the attack on my sister?”

  “Not really,” he said. “I’ve just seen the headlines and photos. . . .” He waved a hand toward the drawer.

  Spots of bright pink appeared on her powdered cheeks. Still she declined to look directly at him.

  “Sometimes I think I went a little mad then,” she said. “If that is so, then I’ve never fully recovered. Perhaps you should read that first newspaper article. The one in Newsday the day after—after it . . .” She trailed off, apparently unable to continue.

  Dr. Stein returned to the desk and retrieved the scrapbook. He held it in his hands with the Mythology. “I’ll borrow this, too, if you don’t mind.” Then, noting her distress, he leaned down to her. “What is it? What do you want to tell me?”

  She glanced up briefly before once again turning away. “It’s what she said to the mailman when he . . . found them. I’ve always wondered . . .” Then she shook her head firmly and took a deep breath. “Oh, never mind. I’m just being silly. She was six years old, for heaven’s sake—”

  At that moment, the telephone rang.

  They stared at each other. He watched as Margaret reached for the receiver. She announced herself and listened. Then she raised startled eyes to the doctor.

  “It’s Robin Trask, the detective I hired,” she told him. “He knows where she is! She just called him and invited him to a party!”

  NINE

  WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 21

  ADAM CROUCHED in the bushes on the hillside, peering up through the darkness at the looming black silhouette of the empty house on Skyline Drive.

  From this angle the house towered over him, jutting up from the steep incline of the hill, giving him the impression that it might at any moment succumb to gravity and begin sliding down toward him. The drive ran along the tops of the mountains near the island’s apex. If the house were suddenly to fall, he would be pushed backward down the steep mountainside to fall some nine hundred feet to the town directly below, a thousand lights winking in the dark. He glanced behind him: it was a dizzying prospect. Looking out across the harbor, black now in the night, he could see the brightly illuminated hotel on a faraway point. Just beyond it, a mere pinprick of light at this great distance, was Cliffhanger. After that, the miles and miles of black ocean, isolating the tiny, thirteen-by-five-mile area of St. Thomas from the rest of the world.

  He smiled to himself, feeling insular, insulated, cut off from civilization. Here, he mused, I make my own rules. Nobody can see me. Not even God.

  He tore his eyes from the breathtaking vista behind him and turned around to focus on the job at hand. Checking to be sure that no immediate neighbors were on their porches or balconies, he crept slowly upward to the building, his black-clad figur
e moving silently through the tall grass.

  Jack Breen and his wife were out tonight, at a party given by the woman who might or might not be Jack’s mistress. He smiled in the darkness: only in St. Thomas.

  Kay was playing bridge with Stu Harriman at a local hotel: she wouldn’t be home until midnight. Diana, at his suggestion, had taken Lisa to the movies at Four Winds Plaza. He’d given them extra money for pizza afterward.

  After dinner, he’d waited at Cliffhanger until Stu arrived to fetch Kay, and the others departed in the Land Rover. Then Nola’s husband had come to drive her home. As soon as everyone else was gone, he’d left the house and driven here, to Skyline Drive, and parked the Nissan in some bushes about a hundred yards down the road. Keeping away from the road and the other houses on the drive, he’d made his way here through the dense undergrowth on the mountainside. He’d passed directly below three suspended porches since he left the road, and the second one had slowed him down. There were people on the balcony, two men and a woman, drinking and laughing together as they grilled steaks on an outdoor barbecue. The white smoke had billowed out into the black sky above the bushes that concealed him, obliterating the moon.

  He figured he’d have at least an hour.

  Excellent.

  The main entrance to the Breens’ house was on the upper floor. The downstairs section, below the road, was a separate apartment, currently unoccupied, a guest room for Stateside visitors. He made his way swiftly up the stairs at the side of the house, which led from the apartment to the parking lot next to the road. The front door and all the windows would be locked, he suspected. It didn’t matter. He reached behind him, into his backpack, and pulled out his tools.

  There was a large bedroom window on this side of the house, about seven feet above the stairs on which he now stood. He reached up, thankful for his height, attached a medium-size suction cup to the glass near the bottom, and cut a small, round hole. No alarm systems to worry about. Many people in St. Thomas—and Jack was one of them—still thought the island was a quaint, quiet, safe place in which to live. Lock the doors, certainly, but no need to bother with alarms. Robberies had only recently begun to be a problem.

  He smiled. There were no alarms at Cliffhanger, either. . . .

  He tugged on the suction cup, pulling the circle of glass away from the window. He reached in with his gloved hand and unlocked the window from the inside. Silently, carefully, he pushed it upward. He leapt up and grasped the windowsill. A mighty swing of his body, and he was inside. He made his way across the darkened bedroom to the door, pulling the pencil-size flashlight from his pack. As he went into the living room, he checked the luminous dial of his watch. Five minutes to ten.

  Excellent.

  He lowered the backpack to the floor, switched on the tiny light, and went to work.

  Trish sighed, reaching over as politely as possible and removing Jerry Flynn’s hand from her left buttock.

  “If you expect me to turn the other cheek, you’d better get me a drink, darling,” she said, and the tall, muscular, beaming Irishman trotted dutifully off.

  Oh, yawn, she thought, glancing around at the other guests in Barbara Conroy’s small, cramped living room. The usual suspects. The dreary old Hill Crowd, the tacky Yacht Club Crowd, boring Old Money, obnoxious New Money, conservative Local Black Aristocracy. Snooze. I didn’t want to come to this thing, and Kay would be off playing duplicate. Oh, well, I’ll see her tomorrow, at Lisa’s birthday party.

  She watched Barbara make the rounds, doing her very best Hostess Bit. She giggled as she watched her consciously avoiding Nancy Breen, her lover’s wife. God, that Nancy must be the dumbest thing to actually come to this party, and to bring Jack with her!

  Jerry returned to her side, bearing refreshments. She smiled and thanked him. He really is rather sweet, she thought, in a rough sort of way. Not bad in bed, either. . . .

  At that point, the little steel band Barbara engaged for the evening struck up a lively calypso tune, and Jerry asked her to dance. They were in mid-samba when Trish heard the raised, angry voices on the other side of the room, followed by the shattering of glass.

  “You didn’t like that movie, did you?” she asked her silent young charge as they walked out of the multiplex cinema in the shopping center and headed for the Land Rover.

  “No,” Lisa moped, not meeting her gaze. “I know I said I wanted a scary movie, but that was a little too scary.”

  In the film they’d just seen, a deranged husband had concocted the perfect plan to kill his unsuspecting new wife and her small son and make off with her millions. Lisa had chosen it, and she’d been unable to change the child’s mind.

  She herself had barely been able to look at the screen.

  She’d watched the actor playing the husband, flaring his nostrils and acting suspicious as hell. Of course, the wife had noticed this and saved herself and her son—with the aid of a hunky, recently divorced cop—just in the nick of time. The wicked husband, wearing a black ski mask and wielding a knife, had been shot dead by the virtuous policeman.

  The actress playing the wife, rescued at the last moment, bore a strong resemblance to her mother.

  The actor playing the policeman looked exactly like her father.

  She’d wiped away her tears as the final credits rolled, before the lights came up and Lisa could notice.

  “Adam gave you money for pizza, didn’t he?” Lisa asked.

  “Yes,” she said, “but it’s ten o’clock now, and you have a big day ahead of you tomorrow, birthday girl.”

  “Oh, I’ll be fine tomorrow,” the child insisted. “We don’t even set sail until eleven. Let’s get a pizza.”

  He’d finished with the silver. He was back in the bedroom now, emptying Nancy Breen’s jewelry boxes into the backpack. He checked his watch again. Nine minutes after ten.

  Excellent.

  As he worked, he thought about Diana. She was so lovely, so tall and slender. That dark hair falling down around her shoulders, those dark eyes flashing. He wondered, again, what it would be like with her. He imagined her naked, under him, his face between her breasts, her mouth open as she groaned with pleasure. In the little house on the beach, or perhaps on the Kay. . . .

  The Kay.

  He thought of Kyle, probably asleep by now on his little bunk in the cabin. Big day tomorrow: eight adults and six children on the boat. Sleep, Kyle. . . .

  He thought, briefly, of Sandra. He’d left her belongings on the tiny, deserted beach, hiding in plain sight. Yet so far they had not been discovered. Oh, well. Nobody seemed to miss her. He certainly did not. What a creep she’d been!

  He ran the beam of his penlight over the surface of Nancy’s bureau. Something gleamed. Silver-plated hairbrush.

  The brush went into the backpack with the other items.

  He checked his watch again. Ten-fifteen.

  Excellent.

  Everyone turned to stare as Nancy Breen, her small, pinched face awash in drunken tears, reached over and slapped her husband as hard as she could. Trish watched her, fascinated. At last, she thought, something’s happening at this stupid party!

  “You pig”! Nancy announced. “You absolute shit! As if I didn’t know why you wanted to come here tonight! To humiliate me again. Well, I’ve been silent long enough. I’m going home. Give me the keys to the car.”

  Trish watched, delighted, as Jack mumbled drunkenly and handed Nancy the keys. Good for you, she thought. Hit him again!

  As if she’d heard Trish’s thoughts, Nancy reared back and did just that.

  “Perhaps our hostess will drive you home!” she shrieked. Then she turned around and barged through the astonished crowd and out the door.

  Barbara, understandably red in the face, signaled to the band, which immediately resumed playing. Trish turned to Jerry.

  “Well, that was fun!” she said. “Let’s get some food.”

  They were at the buffet table, about five minutes later, when Trish—and everybo
dy else—saw Jack Breen borrow Barbara’s car keys and leave the party.

  There was a pause between sets. Kay glanced over at the table below hers. Their next east-west challengers were finishing up the board. She leaned back in her padded chair and glanced across her own table at Stu Harriman.

  “We seem to be doing very well tonight,” she said.

  “I think so,” Stu agreed, grinning over at her. “I’m in a great mood this evening. The insurance came through, so I can start replacing all that jewelry Brenda lost.”

  “Great!” Kay said.

  “Yeah. Brenda’s happy. And we’re installing an alarm system. In case those bastards come back for more.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Kay agreed. “I’ve been thinking about it myself.”

  Stu Harrimans laugh resounded through the banquet room. “You? You’re kidding! Kay, darling, who the hell is going to try to rob Adam Prescott? Nobody in their right mind, that’s who!”

  She shrugged, nodding. “You may have a point.”

  “Your husband is the biggest, meanest-looking sonofabitch I’ve ever seen,” he told her. “That’s better than an alarm system any day! I’m gonna get a beer. Would you like something?”

  “Soda,” she murmured.

  Stu rose and went out to the lobby of the hotel.

  She gazed around at the quiet room. Not many tables tonight, she thought. A lot of people must have gone to Barbara Conroy’s party. She and Adam had begged off. Adam had wanted the night before the birthday party to stay home alone and read. She’d wanted to play bridge tonight, and she didn’t care for Barbara Conroy in the first place.

  Lisa had gone to the movies with Diana.

  Diana.

  She smiled to herself, remembering the phone call two nights before. Diana, with much goading from her, had finally picked up the phone and asked that dreamy young man to go sailing with them. He’d apparently been surprised, then delighted, to hear from her again. Kay had listened to the young woman’s end of the conversation, stilted and formal at first, gradually warming and becoming downright friendly. Bob Taylor had apparently said something funny at one point, and Diana had thrown back her head and laughed. She’d done that earlier, too, at the dinner table, when they told Lisa about tomorrow’s party. The child had been astonished, and the young woman had laughed.