Pulse fq-7

by John Lutz

He mimicked Sherri’s slow, dragging walk and pretended to search with her, but moving at a different angle. The terrain was unchanged enough that he was pretty sure he knew where the collar had landed when he tossed it the night of Duffy’s death.

  Damn! There it was, a touch of faded red in the green-brown undergrowth. He considered leaving it there, but knew it would be found. If not by Sherri, then by someone else. Maybe Daryl. He might be able to bend down and slip the collar into one of his pockets. He also might be seen. And if he did manage to transfer the collar to a pocket, what then? Sherri might be all over him, even if the outline of the collar didn’t show in his tight Levi’s.

  He made his decision and thought no more about it. The wisest alternative would be to find the collar.

  He went to it, kneeled down with his back toward Sherri, and rubbed the dust-covered metal tags on his pants. Half turning out of his stoop, he held the unbuckled and weathered red collar high. “This it?”

  She hurried toward him.

  He rubbed the tags with his fingers as if cleaning them so he could read them. Now his would be the only prints on them, only smeared.

  “Says Duffy,” he told her sadly.

  She took the collar, held it to her with both hands, and started crying again.

  “I’m being stupid,” she said after a while.

  Rory held her and patted her back. “No, not stupid. You loved your dog, is all.”

  Daryl Smith walked over and leaned on his shovel near them. “It yours?”

  Rory thought that should be obvious, but he said nothing as Sherri nodded.

  “Thanks for calling and letting me know,” she said.

  Daryl shrugged, still leaning with both hands on the long wooden shovel handle.

  “She’ll be okay,” Rory said.

  Sherri stood straighter and moved away from him. “There’s a place in the backyard where I wanted to bury him.”

  Daryl glanced at the Chevy. “Maybe I can get you something so the trunk don’t get messed up.”

  “I brought a plastic bag in my purse,” Sherri said. “If you can get Duffy into it. I… don’t want to watch.”

  “That’s fine,” Daryl said.

  Rory waited with him while Sherri went to the car and got the black plastic bag from her purse. She handed it to Daryl and walked back to the car, standing by it and staring down the empty road.

  The Bobcat ceased its clanking and roaring, and the other two construction guys watched as Rory held the bag open and Daryl used his shovel to move the dead dog into the bag. Rory fastened the bag tightly with its yellow plastic pull ties.

  Daryl stooped and picked up the red collar. “She musta dropped this. You want it?”

  Sherri was standing by the open trunk of the Chevy, watching them.

  “I better take it,” Rory said, and accepted the collar. “She might wanna save it.”

  “Women,” Daryl said.

  “Dogs get like kids to them,” Rory said.

  Daryl nodded toward the plastic bag. “I’m glad that’s just a dog and it ain’t my kid.”

  “Yeah, well… we’ll get him buried, maybe even say a few words.”

  “Put up a little marker. Here lies Duffy. Fetch in peace.”

  “Don’t let her see you smile,” Rory said, starting with the bag toward Sherri and the car’s open trunk.

  Rory dug Duffy’s second grave at the far end of Sherri’s backyard. Her ten-year-old brother, Clyde, watched somberly from a distance.

  When the grave was finished, Rory placed the plastic bag containing Duffy in it, as well as the collar and tags. Sherri mumbled a few words that Rory could barely hear, then picked up a handful of dirt and tossed it on the bag. Then she backed away, and Rory went to work again with the shovel.

  When he was finished, Clyde came closer. “You gonna put a cross on the grave?”

  “No,” Rory said. “That’d just make people curious and they might disturb it. This way Duffy will rest in peace.”

  “Do dogs do that?” Clyde asked. “Wouldn’t they rather be running around?”

  “Ask your sister.”

  “She went on in the house. She was crying.”

  “Well, she’s upset.”

  “I miss Duffy, too. I don’t cry about it.”

  “Girls are different.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.”

  Rory put the shovel back in the garage, then went to an outside faucet and began washing off his hands.

  Sherri was back outside now, and stood close to him. “Take one of these, why don’t you?”

  He saw that she was holding three small white pills in her pink palm.

  “I thought you were so against drugs.”

  “These are prescription. They’re different.”

  “So what are they?”

  “Loraza-something or other. My mom takes them to help her sleep. If you take them, they’ll make you feel better. Not so sad.”

  “Have you taken any?”

  “Yeah. Two. I brought you three because you’re bigger.”

  Rory didn’t want to admit he wasn’t terribly broken up about Duffy’s passing, so he accepted the pills and put them in his mouth, then ran faucet water into his hand and scooped water into his mouth and swallowed.

  “You got water all over your shirt,” Sherri said. Her dark eyes were red and swollen.

  “You gonna be okay?” he asked, turning off the spigot.

  “I think so.”

  “Your mom home?”

  “No, but Clyde is. We can’t mess around.”

  “Guess not.”

  “I’ll thank you later for doing this for me,” she said. “Thank you properly.”

  She kissed him on the lips and he felt an immediate erection.

  Sherri must have felt it, too. “I better not do that,” she said, smiling up at him. “And you better get the car back to your mother.”

  Rory waved good-bye to Clyde, who’d been standing watching them, then got into the Chevy and backed it down the driveway and into the street. So far he didn’t feel any different from taking the pills. He ran a stop sign near his house, but managed to get the Chevy parked back in the garage.

  When he went in through the kitchen he saw a note from his mother beneath the salt shaker on the table. She’d gone shopping with a neighbor in the woman’s car and would be back soon.

  Rory got a soda from the refrigerator, went into the living room, and slumped down on the sofa. He used his cell phone to call Sherri and they talked for a while. Sherri was the one who started giggling and talking crazy, then they both started making less and less sense so they each kissed their phones and then broke the connection.

  Leaning back in the sofa, Rory sighed happily. It had been a hell of a day, but looking back on it, not such a bad one. He and Sherri were closer now, that was for sure. All in all, his world seemed pretty good, its pieces all in place.

  He rested the back of his head against the sofa cushion and wondered…

  It seemed like five seconds later when Rory woke up. It was dark outside. He struggled to an upright position and took a sip of soda. It was warm and fizzy and some spilled down onto his shirt.

  He looked around for a clock, then remembered that there was none in the living room. That was where he was, in the living room of his house.

  Reassuring, familiar territory.

  After unremembered dreams?

  He took a few deep breaths and decided he felt pretty good. Maybe a little confused, and sort of… heavy.

  Light played over the living room walls. Headlights. Tires scrunching gravel. A car in the driveway.

  Voices. A car door slamming. High heels clacking on the concrete porch. Paper sacks crackling. A soft jingling and then the ratcheting sound of a key being inserted in a lock.

  The light came on, causing his eyes to ache.

  “Why on earth are you sitting there in the dark?” Rory’s mother asked. She was standing near the door, clutching several large Antoine’s bags.
>
  “I was watching TV. Musta fell asleep.”

  “I hope you didn’t spill any of that soda on the couch.”

  “Nope. I was careful.”

  He suddenly realized he had to piss, and urgently, so he stood up, swaying gently. He couldn’t get his legs to work for a moment; then he trudged heavily toward the hall and the bathroom.

  “You’re still half asleep,” his mother said.

  “I guess I am. TV does that sometimes.” He plodded on toward the bathroom. How did it get so far away?

  He still felt heavy. More like three-fourths asleep. Drugged.

  Sherri and her little white pills.

  But they had worked. He remembered feeling much better not long after taking them. The tension, his fear that he might say something wrong, or that in some other way Sherri would find out what really happened to Duffy, had seemed suddenly unimportant and then left him.

  If the pills worked this time, they’d work again. People expected so much from him. It wasn’t as if he lived a life without pressure.

  He bumped into the small table in the hall, causing it to scrape against the wooden baseboard.

  “For God’s sake, turn on a light,” his mother said behind him. “I hope you don’t drive that way at night. You’re liable to kill somebody.”

  55

  New York, the present

  D r. Grace Moore’s office was on West Forty-fourth Street, in a building attached to The Lumineux, a swank hotel with European decor. The idea was that some of the tasteful mood and environment might rub off.

  Her office was furnished much in the manner of the hotel, with minimalist style and obviously expensive furniture. Matching taupe carpet and drapes set off-but barely-mauve furniture and throw rugs over a hardwood floor. Deep blue was, here and there, an accent color. The tan leather sofa where her patients sat was incredibly comfortable. She thought that in sum the office gave her patients confidence in her, and engendered a heightened tendency to share secrets.

  Linda Brooks, a twenty-nine-year-old woman Dr. Moore had been treating for two years, had seemed exceptionally upset when she’d arrived for her appointment today, but now, sitting back on the sofa with her head resting against the cushions, her eyes half closed, she’d obviously calmed down.

  Linda was an attractive dark-haired girl with well-defined features and a cleft chin that helped to lend her a habitual sincere and determined expression. Her teeth seemed always clenched, her jaw muscles almost constantly flexing. Linda had been diagnosed five years ago as mildly schizophrenic with episodes of paranoia. Lately, the paranoia had been increasing in frequency and seriousness.

  “Have you been taking your meds as required?” Grace asked, seated in a soft swivel chair with her legs crossed. As usual, she was composed and calm.

  “Of course I have,” Linda said. “That’s what they’re for, aren’t they?

  “Do I sense hostility?”

  “Toward you, no,” Linda said.

  “Toward yourself?”

  “God, let’s not get into that.”

  “Isn’t that why you’re here?”

  “I knew you were going to ask that.”

  “Of course you did; it’s the obvious question.”

  “So is my reply. No offense, Dr. Moore, but you don’t know the right questions.”

  “So what are they?”

  “The questions I’d ask.”

  “Such as?”

  “Will I ever again look forward to getting out of bed when I wake up? Am I ever going to be able to develop a loving relationship with a man? Will I ever have to live on the streets because my parents’ money and my insurance have run out? Will any of these shitty medicinal cocktails you dream up actually cure me? Is it possible I’m imagining being stalked by the same man?”

  “What was that last one again?”

  Linda smiled, pleased to have piqued Dr. Moore’s interest.

  “He’s average height, built like a young Frank Sinatra, wears a baseball cap sometimes, like he thinks it’s some kinda disguise. But I see him. I know him. I recognize him. You think he’s a hallucination, but he’s not.”

  “Frank Sinatra… I would have thought you’d say Mick Jagger, or somebody more to the musical tastes of people your age.”

  “Okay, Mick Jagger. Even though he’s older than both of us.”

  “This man who’s following-”

  “Stalking.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Where he appears, how he moves, how he looks at me. Have you ever gone to the zoo and tried to outstare one of the big cats?”

  “Believe it or not, yes,” Dr. Moore said. “A long time ago. A panther. I found it impossible.”

  “Because if the bars hadn’t been there, the panther would have consumed you. Both of you knew that. And now one is stalking me. There are no bars.”

  Dr. Moore felt a chill of fear, and pity, for what Linda must be going through. “Where do you see this man, Linda?”

  “The street, subway, park, my apartment…”

  “ Inside your apartment?”

  “Once, for just an instant, when he was leaving out through the kitchen window. There’s a fire escape out there.” Linda opened her eyes all the way to match stares with Grace. Like the panther, Grace thought. “He wasn’t a hallucination.”

  “Was the kitchen window closed and locked?”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay. How could he get in?”

  “Key. I leave my spare key under my doormat out in the hall.”

  “That’s the first place anyone would look, Linda.”

  “Right. And when I get home I always look to make sure the key’s still there. If it is, that means nobody’s used it to get inside. Then I’m not afraid to go in.”

  Grace wasn’t going to cross swords over that one. “Was the key under the mat the day you saw the man in your apartment?”

  “Of course not. So I used my key and went in. I was going to see him, talk to him, make sure he was real. But he was already halfway out the window.”

  Something with countless legs crawled up Grace Moore’s spine. “Did he say anything before he left?”

  “No. He was more interested in getting out of there. He left the key, though. I found it on the corner of the kitchen table. I put it back under the mat.” Linda laced her fingers behind her head and regarded the doctor. “Now you’re wondering, was there really a man? Might he even have followed Linda here? Or is this simply more of Linda’s usual paranoiac bullshit?”

  Grace smiled. “Of course you’re right.”

  “I get so tired of not being believed.”

  “I didn’t say I disbelieved you.”

  “Word games. I bet you’re good at Scrabble.”

  “I’m unbeatable,” Grace said.

  “Well, you’ve never played anyone crazy.”

  “But I have. Maybe someday you and I can-”

  “No. You probably know too many seven-letter words.”

  “You know you do sometimes hallucinate. And you don’t always take your meds as prescribed. It’s easy to forget. And you do hear voices. So what makes you think-”

  “If he hadn’t been real, don’t you think I would have given him a voice?”

  Grace was a bit startled by that observation, because it was a reasonable question. “Let’s make him this real,” she said. “I think you should find a better place for your spare key.”

  “Then I wouldn’t know if it was dangerous to go inside the apartment. I’d no longer have my key-nary in the mine shaft, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do. And it’s good you still have your sense of humor.”

  “If I didn’t have that I’d go cra-hey, wait a minute!”

  Grace had to laugh. Linda was, in her own way, often the brightest person in the room.

  “The son of a bitch is real,” Linda said. “Believe it.”

  Dr. Moore knew better.

  56

  I t was cool and dim in t
he lounge off the Lumineux Hotel’s lobby. The lounge featured lots of black leather, tinted glass, and brushed aluminum. A few business types sat here and there, talking deals, making excuses, their drinks before them like ceremonial potions on square white coasters. Futures could be made or lost here in ways profound but barely noticeable.

  The killer sat at the bar and periodically checked his watch. Linda Brooks hadn’t suspected he was following her. At first he’d thought she might enter the hotel, which could have provided some interesting aspects. Each quarry was, after all, an adventure.

  Instead, she’d walked past the hotel and entered the Cartling Towers, a glass and steel monstrosity adjacent to the Lumineux. He’d managed to squeeze into the crowded elevator she’d ridden to a high floor, and exited after she did, turning the other way in the hall and then stopping and watching which door she entered. He could perform that maneuver adroitly and without attracting attention. He’d had practice.

  A psychiatrist’s office. Wonderful!

  He glanced at his watch. It was a few minutes before the hour, so it was likely she had an appointment.

  Linda had entered the office of a Dr. Grace Moore, according to the brass lettering on the door. So probably she was under analysis, learning to cope with her problems. She hadn’t realized her primary problem was close behind her, watching the play of her nylon-clad calf muscles as she strode in her high heels, the pendulum sway of her hips, the graceful elbows-in swing of her lissome arms.

  He made a study of her, as he did with all of them.

  The killer considered entering the doctor’s office, perhaps taking a seat in the waiting room, if there was one. Pretending, if necessary, that he’d accidentally entered the wrong office. Linda wouldn’t recognize him. Not for sure. She’d only seen him from a distance, and then only briefly. He’d never moved in close without being positive he wasn’t spotted. And she’d never imagine he could pop up here, of all places.

  He would artfully make his exit while her mind was still working and wondering, leaving her frightened and unknowing. Oh, he was tempted. It would be daring and fun and productive. And it would certainly confuse, and maybe rattle, her analyst. But he had second thoughts about that idea. It might be a mistake for her to see him in such close quarters.