by Kim Powers
I’d run all the way all the way here from Charlie’s, faster than my best time at the Olympics, yelling at Mizell on my cell phone to meet me here. And then she’d had to do some fast talking to even get us in: waving her detective shield, throwing around some big names. The police chief. The president of the college. The FBI on their way . . .
Michael Dowd, the guard’s name tag said. Curly blond hair, a Baby Huey face, a button or two on his uniform straining at his waist. Not exactly the lone guy I’d put in charge of a $38 million treasure, but good for us.
And it was like Fort Knox, whatever the hell they were keeping down here, besides something that might save my daughter.
My daughter. Hydras. That’s what. Find that reed, or watch her bleed.
We finally got to a double metal door at the end of the hallway; blue and green and violet light emanated from a small window set into each door; glass embedded with crisscrossing metal mesh. The guard started to punch in a code, but one of the doors swung open by itself, just at his touch.
Like it had been deliberately left unlocked, waiting, just for me.
“That’s weird,” Dowd said. “These things stay locked all the time. You need clearance . . . ”
What if this was a trap, to get me? He’d lured me in here, left the door unlocked. Was he in there now, waiting for me? Waiting with a gun?
Mizell must have had the same thought, because she suddenly pulled hers out and went into defense mode, arms held out straight, with the gun in front of her.
Dowd freaked out. “Wait . . . you didn’t tell me it was dangerous.”
“Just a precaution.” I told him, then stepped in front of Mizell, turning to speak to her, almost sotto voce. “And you’re the one who got shot, remember? He wants me alive. He won’t shoot. Not at me at least.” I had ten more Labors still to do. He wouldn’t take me out, not yet. He was just getting started.
Then so was I.
I pushed the door open—cautiously—and we were inside.
And then we understood.
“Wow.” That was Mizell.
“You already said that.”
“I know, but . . . wow.”
Inside, tanks and water beds and filters, pipes leading from one tank to the next, some glass-enclosed, like aquariums, some open air. Things floated on top of the water and below it, giant masses of phosphorescent tangles and stalks sending out bubbles, as if they were breathing on their own. Life. Biology. An ecosystem, a hi-tech Eden.
A biosphere. That was the only word for it, other than Oz.
I asked Dowd the question, even though I already knew the answer. “What are these things?”
“Hydras.”
Bingo. Thin reeds. Hydras, in those open-air tanks, floating like seaweed with prickly tentacles that look like faces, branching off a single body.
“But what do they do?” Mizell asked.
“Rumor is they could be a replacement for Botox. That’s what the school’s hoping. This is their leading candidate.”
Thirty-eight million, for the next Botox.
The kidnapper had to have been in here. How else would he have known these were here? Hell, I taught here and I didn’t even know this was going on, under my very nose.
Dowd flicked on the lights, and even they came up in the same color as the water. Gentle blues and greens. Growing colors. Nothing too jarring to disrupt the gentle life cycle of the hydras. But enough light to let us see that nobody else was inside. In the strange glow of colored lights from the room, and the wavy patterns that the tanks of water were giving off, we all looked like we were underwater. Swimming.
“Listen, you folks take a look around, but I’m gonna go back and check the log. Call my supervisor. That door shouldn’t have been open.”
He left, and we were alone, the soothing sound of burgling—a Skip word, from bubbling and gurgling combined—almost making us forget what we were here for. What had been done, to bring us here.
Burgling. Skip. My God. Where was she? What was he doing to her? Even in this place of such wondrous beauty, my brain kept going back there. Why her, when he wanted me?
But now what? The kidnapper hadn’t said to get one of the hydras, but that must be what he meant. One giant scavenger hunt, with all of the Canaan campus as my playing field.
I started to plunge my hands into the water.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Mizell hissed at me, the only harsh noise in this place of soothing sounds.
“Don’t tell me you care about taking school property?” I said.
“No, just . . . what if it’s not water? Some kind of chemical or something. Acid.”
There was nothing in here to test the water with, nothing that was loose or extraneous or not attached to something else. All glass and metal and tubes. I ripped off my jacket and dipped a corner of my sleeve into the water, to see if it sizzled or exploded. Nothing happened. It just got wet.
Still, Mizell took out her gun and pointed it at the tank. Just in case.
“What, you’re gonna shoot a plant?” I asked her. “You think this could all be just some ploy to get one of these plants? Use us as the stooges to dig one up, so he could walk off with the money?”
“If he somehow got in here, he could dig up his own damn plant. No. It’s part of the Labors. It’s part of . . . Skip.”
My string bean.
That was my cue to plunge my hands inside the water. Now or never. Skip or . . . nothing.
Now we were the culprits, the snakes in the Garden of Eden.
It was cold, but not caustic, that shock of your first jump in the water in June. I reached all the way down to the bottom of the tank, three feet or so, and started trying to pull an entire bunch of the reeds out by the root. For something so delicate looking, they were amazingly sturdy, as if the roots kept going through the layer of mud at the bottom and anchored into the concrete floor. I kept pulling and pulling, but nothing, just the water getting clouded up.
That’s when we heard Michael Dowd coming back, his walkie-talkie bleating noises to announce his return.
I was yanking at the plant, now a cyclone of mud stirring up in the tank, but still nothing.
I had to get that fucking plant before he came back in, just in case he decided he was here to protect the school’s $38 million investment. I was looking around for a knife. Scissors. Anything. But nothing. I was on my own.
No, Skip was with me. An image came to me: her fighting against the kidnapper. Those streak marks Mizell had shown me, in the kitchen. Her getting dragged out. Not going without a fight.
Then I wasn’t either.
I closed my eyes and prayed—Skippy, stay strong, fight back, don’t give up, give me strength—then I grabbed Mizell’s gun and shot straight down at one of the stalks, the bullet cutting it in two, inside the aquarium.
Water flew everywhere, as the stalks came flying out of the water, with a maze of tangled white roots that seemed to go on for yards. Ganglia. Water and dirt dripping on the concrete floor, and me.
Just then, Dowd clicked away his last number on the keypad lock, and the door opened.
A change in the air pressure.
I whipped the stalk behind my back, just as Dowd said, “Sorry I kept you so long.”
“Oh, no problem.” Don’t look, don’t look at all the mess I’ve made, I prayed. “Well, we’ll get out of your way now. Thanks so much. We just needed to make sure the kidnapper wasn’t in here.”
“I hope you find him. And I hope you find her. Bring Skip back. I’ll show her around the place. Kids get a kick out of it.”
“I will.” I raced ahead of him, switching the hydra in front of me so he wouldn’t see it, as he turned out the lights and clicked the door locked behind us.
“Can I throw up yet?” Mizell heaved, as we power-raced out of the building. Both of us heaving.
“Not yet. Not ’til we’re away from Michael Dowd and his walkie-talkie.”
I collapsed against the side of the b
uilding, with his words, the words that ended his latest rhyme, still in my head: Then post it on Facebook, to get what I took.
We still weren’t finished.
In that brilliant, dark November night, I held the hydra up in front of me, like a prized fishing trophy. I turned my cell phone toward me, aimed and clicked the camera button, and the night was electrified by a flash of pure white light. Then the whoosh sound that my cell phone made, to tell me the photo had just posted to my Facebook account, for anybody to see.
For him to see.
“There’s your selfie, motherfucker.” I paused, then turned to my partner in crime. “Now you can throw up.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Dozens and dozens of photos of her father.
That’s what Skip saw, everywhere she looked, when her blindfold came off and her vision came back. Blurry, then coming into focus, then . . . this.
Before, she’d just been in a room. That’s all she knew: a desk, four walls, a madman who came and went. But now, she saw how mad, from what was up on the walls.
“Here, let’s turn on the lights, to help you . . . understand. Your . . . art lesson.”
But not even a single bulb, hanging from a cord in the center of room, could help Skip understand what she was looking at. The bulb swung and its light streaked across giant murals on the walls, revealing shadowy glimpses of things she knew her father had once told her about, as he read from mythology books to put her to sleep. Lions and horses, chariots and birds, monsters and men and fire. And Hercules. The real one, and the imagined one: her father.
“It’s a diorama. Panorama? Something with rama at the end . . . a sweep-orama! That’s it! The Twelve Labors of Hercules . . . with our special guest star.”
Everywhere Skip could see—everywhere he allowed her to see, as his fingers continued to position her head from behind—were photos of her father. Scattered through the twelve murals, and intermixed with the bizarre iconography of the labors, were old newspaper clippings and photographs of Ethan Holt: his entire athletic career, an obsessed fan’s art gallery, a veritable shrine to him. The endorsement carefully cut off the cereal box. The cover of the workout book some publishing house had slapped together two months after the win, along with the cover of Herc Holt: My Story. And in the dead middle, what appeared to be her captor’s pride and joy: an autographed picture, signed by her father.
“See! We’re more alike. Than you realize, my dear Elizabeth. You and. I. We’re both. Artists.”
How did he know her real name was Elizabeth? Nobody called her Elizabeth. Nobody had ever called her Elizabeth.
“We’re not alike at all. I don’t take people. I don’t hurt people.”
“Oh, let’s not. Go there. Let’s not do that at all. We don’t want to start comparing. Physical pain. I am a. Masterpiece. Of pain. Past. Present. And future.”
He stopped. Catching a breath, or changing the topic, she couldn’t tell.
“I was happy to see your artwork, by the way. BTW. Isn’t that what they say? In the . . . chat rooms?”
“What artwork?” She was confused; she’d been looking at his artwork—his horrible, horrible artwork—up on the wall in front of her, and now . . . what was he talking about?
“Your little . . . sculptures. In the attic. You’re going to be quite good.”
“How did you see what’s up there?”
“When I . . . borrowed you.”
“You went up there?”
“At some point, you’re going to have to decide—art, or Art. Capital A. Acting, or . . . decoupage.”
“How did you know that I . . . that I’ve been in plays? You know that?”
“I’ve seen them. I told you. I know you. Since you were little. I like what you’ve done. With the little mirrors. How they . . . show you who you are. You can’t help but . . . face yourself. See yourself, as others see you. That’s hard. That’s Art.”
The kidnapper held one hand up, gesturing proudly toward the decorated walls, and for just a second, she was free to move her head. Not all the way around; she didn’t want to see him, or at least to let him know that she saw him, but just enough to bow her head toward the floor to look behind her, to see if any blood had dripped down off her wrist, from where she’d been sawing away at the duct tape.
No blood. A nice-sized rip in the tape.
Her mother’s recipe card, dropped and waiting for her under the refrigerator.
His madness, up on the wall.
She could do this.
She had to do this, or she somehow knew she was going to be up there too.
Pictures of her, after she was dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I’d never been at my office at one in the morning. Mizell and I had gone there to wait it out, because it was closer than going home. Practically the only light in the room was my open laptop; we both felt like we were still in hiding, that Michael Dowd could race in and take back what we’d stolen, any minute now. Mizell had scrounged up a bucket and filled it with water to keep the hydra in, so it wouldn’t die, as we waited to see what instructions came back to us, on my Facebook page.
If they came back to us.
If he came back to us.
I’d done the insane thing he wanted, posted the photo to my virtually empty Facebook page. For the longest time, I didn’t even have a photo of myself there, just that blank gray silhouette that was the default. Skip told me it made me look like a loser, so she put a photo in for me.
Over the years, I’ve posted a few photos on the page—again, mainly at the insistence of Skip—Daaa-aaad, it looks like you never do anything. Thank God she’d taught me how to snap a photo on my cell phone and post it, so that . . .
So that I could get her back.
Selfie with hydra. My face expressionless, dead, like a kidnap victim forced to pose for a proof of life picture, the flash of light against the darkness making me look like someone caught in the act, doing something other people weren’t supposed to see. Something so intimate. Life and death stuff, my most sacred private moments. And now they all would. Why would he make me post the photo there? So he could put me on public display, my devastation, like one of the zanes at the ancient Olympics?
“We’re doing background checks on all of them . . . your friends,” Mizell said, almost reading my mind.
“None of my friends would do something like this,” I answered.
“Somebody’s friend did.”
She was walking around the office, taking it all in. A kettle bell on my desk which I used for quick arm crunches. And for a paperweight. A framed photo of me and Skip and Patti. The worn Persian rug that I’d brought in from home years ago; Skip had done her first crawling on it, then her first baby steps, grabbing onto my knees with her chubby fingers then pulling herself up.
I wanted to get down on my hands and knees and sniff it in, grab handfuls of the rug, just to touch something that she had once touched.
“You let Skip have a Facebook page? Don’t bother . . . I already know the answer. We’ve been tracing all her friends too, checking her IM file. Now my daughter, she’s only eleven . . . she’s begging me for one, but I think she’s too young. I say, ‘Why you even need that when all you do is text your friends anyway?’ She says . . . well, it doesn’t matter what she says. I’m not gonna let her have one and that’s that.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I told her.
“What?”
“Talk to me. Make conversation. Keep me company.”
“This is who I am. You’re the one who doesn’t have to talk. You’re excused. But this is how I roll. I talk. I talk out loud. Helps me think.” Mizell was short-circuiting like I was. Her thoughts coming in quick little spurts.
“I didn’t mean . . . I don’t know what I mean. I’m sorry.” Then I said it out loud, for the first time. I allowed it to come into my head: the idea that something bad could actually happen to her, that all of this wouldn’t have a good ending. “I’ll d
ie if something happens to her.”
“I know.”
“No you don’t. All due respect—nobody could know what this is like.”
Mizell didn’t say anything back to me, she just kept scratching up under her wig, then straightening it back into place, until she finally yanked the whole thing off. “Starts itching, late at night.” Underneath, she was almost bald; her scalp was patchy, flecked with some gray fuzz.
What are you looking at? her expression seemed to say.
“This?” she said, pointing to her head. “See, this is what happens when you go a little crazy. When you think you’re gonna die. You lose your hair and have to wear cheap-ass wigs.”
She was going as crazy as I was. I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“Scoot over,” she said, walking toward me and plopping down on the same wooden rolling desk chair I was already in, forcing me to squeeze to the edge. Under the desk, she used the toes of one foot to push one of her shoes off, then repeated the process on the opposite foot. “That feels better.”
She pulled the laptop toward her, then started tapping away on the keyboard with her French-tipped fingernails. A new Facebook page popped up: a beautiful little black girl, a little younger looking than Skip. A big wide smile, a swath of long dark hair pomaded and combed to one side of her face, an unfortunate blanket of acne on her forehead. But still, that smile. The photo looked like one of those department store deals: a come-on with purchase, against a mottled blue drop cloth. The girl’s hand was resting under her chin; that’s how I knew she was younger than Skip. A photographer told her to pose that way. No thirteen-year-old would, not on her own.
“Janice Miner. The one I told you about.”
“Who? The one who . . . ?”
“That’s right. The little girl who got kidnapped. She’s my niece. Was my niece. Hell, she is my niece. They can’t take that away from me. They can take away my hair, but they can’t take away her.”