Eye of the Beholder

by Shari Shattuck

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because that’s not right.” Greer looked directly at him and prayed that she would be wrong, that this was all a product of her fear and imagination, that nothing meant that Joy was with this maniac, subject to his twisted whims. “It’s on her forehead, isn’t it?” Slowly she raised her right hand and placed her middle finger on the spot just above but directly between her eyebrows, where she had felt the burning. “Here.”

  Sheridan felt a strange thrill go through him, followed quickly by an overdose of suspicion. He had heard of psychics helping police before, but he had never thought it was real. This woman was either real or—his practical brain insisted loudly that his second instinct was far more probable—she was connected to the crime.

  “How do you know that?” he asked, dropping the pretense.

  Greer closed her eyes and swayed slightly as the reality of it rocked the room around her. She was right. “Because when I saw the image, I felt a burning here.” She touched the spot again. “Sometimes that happens when I get a reading on an impending injury or future illness. I sense it in my body. Usually it’s just a tingling sensation, but this . . .” She hesitated, searching for the words. “This was more . . . it was stronger than I’ve ever felt a physical sensation.” She thought about the other things that made it stronger: that both she and Joshua had seen the eye, and the detail that she had connected herself to Joy with the bracelet, but she mentioned neither of these things to Detective Sheridan. She had something else to ask.

  “Why was the article wrong? Was that a mistake?”

  Sheridan sighed, thinking his answer out before he gave it. “Because, very often, a sociopath who leaves a mark does it to be showy. They want to read about it in the paper; they want it reported and want it to be reported correctly. The chances are this guy”—he paused and looked away from Greer deliberately—“had a reason for doing this. He’ll be upset that the papers got it wrong. So, I give the wrong info to the papers, they publish it, and I hope to help flush the guy out by having him call in, to me or the reporters, and brag or insist that they get the details right. It’s a long shot, but with no leads it’s one worth taking.”

  The detective sat back slowly, like a boulder rolling into place, and clicked his pen twice. “And now you call me”—his eyes shifted back to her—“and tell me that I got it wrong.” He let the statement hang, each word heavy as a large stone, ready to fall and obliterate everything below them.

  It took Greer a minute to put it together. When she did she felt as though a fog had inundated her body, a thick, heavy haze. “Yes.” Greer looked directly at him. “I assumed that you would have to suspect me.”

  Sheridan looked at her with unwavering eyes. “How long ago did you move into the community?”

  “About a week and a half ago,” Greer told him.

  “And in that time two girls have disappeared.”

  “One of them is my neighbor’s child.”

  “Exactly.”

  Greer waited, her body tingling with a million pinpoints of apprehension.

  “What was the name of your business again?” Sheridan asked, as though he’d forgotten.

  “Eye of the Beholder,” Greer answered by rote, and then heard the word eye come back at her. “But you can’t think that has anything to do with this!”

  “It’s an awfully big coincidence.”

  “No!” Greer told him emphatically. “The eye that I saw was something like an eye-shaped talisman. The kind that superstitious people sometimes carry to ward off evil. Only this would be the opposite of warding it off, wouldn’t it?”

  “I’d say so.” He was looking at her with one eyebrow a fraction of an inch higher than the other one.

  Greer said pointedly, “I’m trying to help you. Why would I do that if I were somehow responsible?”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised by what people do. And I don’t think it was you,” Detective Sheridan told her slowly, watching her hands, her shoulders, looking for a tic or an unconscious movement. “Not unless you can give me a sperm sample.”

  Greer was both relieved and revolted. The thought of Joy—or any woman—being sexually assaulted left her furious and weak. “Oh,” was all she said, “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  What the detective said next was the last thing that Greer had thought of, the last thing she had even considered.

  The hard man with smart, tired eyes looked at Greer and said in an even voice that would not be questioned, “Could you ask your son to come down here, please?”

  Chapter 35

  After Joshua turned the key in the lock, he leaned his back against the door. He was sweating, panicking. He realized that up until now he had hoped that it might all be unreal, hallucinations, a nightmare. But now there was proof.

  His mother had said that the girl they found had been branded with an eye, and he had seen an eye hovering over Joy. There must be a connection.

  He paced the room, finding it impossible to be still. Forcing himself to stop and try to calm down, he placed both hands on the back of his wooden desk chair, gripping the knobs until his knuckles were white, and looked out across to Joy’s window.

  Empty, dark, nothing.

  The sound of a car driving up, moving too quickly on the rutted road, drew his glance away. A hatchback Toyota sporting a few rust stains pulled up behind the police cars and a woman got out. Hesitantly, as though she were afraid the black-and-white vehicles might bite her, the heavyset woman dressed all in black circumnavigated them and went to the door of Luke’s house.

  Joshua turned away, hearing only distantly the sound of the woman knocking. “I have to try to help them,” his mother had said. He had to try too.

  But how? He’d never done this before. The visions had come uninvited, and he had pushed them away. How would he go about calling them up? He thought about the girl—what had Natalie said her name was? Zoe? He tried to imagine how it would feel to be branded, and a halting half breath, half cry came from his parted lips. Jesus Christ.

  He had to try.

  Desperately his eyes scanned the room, finally fixing on the picture of the moon in the Ansel Adams photograph. With no other ideas, he placed the chair in the middle of the floor facing the picture and sat down. He watched the moon, trying to clear away anything but the image of it in his mind. He let his eyes trace the imperfect circle of its orb and he began to think, Where are you?

  It happened just as suddenly as when it had come upon him unaware, but because he had been searching for it, it was less frightening. There was very little to see, really. Most of the room around him went darker. Joshua closed his eyes and entered into a feeling of being in a different place. It was dark there, and small. There was a line of light down low; Joshua could see very little, but he could feel fear, claustrophobia. At first he couldn’t place it, and then he remembered hiding when he was small, playing with his father, playing hide-and-seek, and the light creeping under the closet door.

  Joy was in a closet.

  This was not a game; the door was locked, and Joy was trapped inside. Reeling back with the shock of it, Joshua almost pulled away, but something else was showing itself to him. Not in that place, not in any place that he could identify. It was more like a presence that was there with him, but not on the same plane as the room. It was the figure of a girl, not Joy, but a girl about Joy’s age, with shorter, lighter hair and a smiling face. He could clearly make out her features this time. They were pleasant features, but intent, and as she looked at him she gestured continually, pointing up and to the left.

  A sharp rapping at the door jerked Joshua’s eyes open, and it took a few seconds for him to reconcile himself to the fact that he was in his room, and the figure of the girl was gone. He was sure that he had seen, almost as though through her own eyes, what Joy had been seeing and feeling in a dark closet, but it had given him no further clues.

  The knocking came again, and someone tried the door. The lock held.

>   Joshua crossed to it, his equilibrium slightly askew, and rotated the key until the old lock clicked open.

  Somehow, he was not surprised to see the detective.

  Chapter 36

  Joy had fallen into a fitful sleep with her head leaning into the corner of the tight space and her knees drawn up to her chest. The sound of a truck pulling up outside sent her bolt upright, her eyes open, but still seeing nothing in the dark closet except the line of dim daylight from the crack beneath it.

  Please, God, she thought, let it be someone, anyone, besides him. But the sound of the heavy boots on the deck outside sent the hope spinning toward the ground like a songbird filled with buckshot. She cowered back farther into the darkness. He’d locked her in this morning, shortly after dawn, when he went to bed for a couple of hours. When she’d heard him leave she had tried everything she could think of to get out, but finally slumped back and sobbed into her hands. How could she have been so stupid?

  Joy heard him move around the house as though completely unaware of her, the clinking of the keys at his belt always accompanying the heavy footsteps. She heard the microwave go on, and then a radio. She waited, listening furiously. Dishes clinked as they were washed, dried, and put away.

  The leaden footfalls and mockingly mellifluous song of the keys approached the closet door and stopped on the other side. Joy’s heartbeat pounded in her ears so loudly that she could hardly hear the keys jangle as one was inserted into the lock. She covered her eyes as the light from the room fell on her. He was a huge, black silhouette towering above her.

  “Well, hello, there. Have you been a good little girl?” he asked her, as though she had spent the morning at kindergarten. Joy did not respond; she was shaking, and she couldn’t look up at him.

  “Why don’t you come on out?” He reached in and pulled Joy, not unkindly, to her feet. With her pupils dilated from the extended unnatural darkness, the light was painful, but she looked up into his eyes. Maybe last night had been a nightmare. Maybe he would be different during the day.

  “I, uh, need to go to the bathroom,” she muttered.

  “Of course you do. Come on; I’ll walk you.” They went down the short hall, Joy stumbling slightly as her legs cramped from being folded up for so long. She went in and, closing the door behind her, fumbled for a lock, but there was none. She heard a low laugh, as though he had known she would try that.

  In spite of her embarrassment, she desperately needed to relieve herself, so she went to the toilet and, watching the door the whole time, lowered her pants and sat as quickly as she could. He didn’t come in, and she hurriedly zipped herself up again. Going to the sink, she let water run into her cupped palm and gulped it greedily. Then she looked at herself in the mirror.

  What she saw shocked her. One side of her face was bruised, slightly yellowish, and beginning to turn purple. That was the first place he had hit her. They’d stayed up most of the night doing drugs, and as the hours had gone on his personality had changed, sliding from pleasant and respectful down to base, crude. His musings had seemed directed at disconcerting her, and she had tried to act unaffected, until it had become impossible not to be disturbed at the depth of depravity he talked about so casually. This was a very different person from the one she had met before, the one who had flattered her and taken her for a ride on his bike. By dawn she’d known she was in trouble, worse trouble than anything she’d ever known. She’d said she needed to go home and he’d told her no, he wanted her to stay for a while. She’d tried to pretend he was joking, feigning a laugh, and that was when his hand had made contact with her face, sending her into the side of the sofa. After that she had sat cradling her head while he explained to her that things would be different now. That she couldn’t go until he said so. She had expected him to rape her, but the drugs seemed to have rendered him incapable.

  So it had been the closet. Glancing at the small, narrow window by the shower, she guessed it was early afternoon, but the overcast day made it hard to tell. The window was too small for her to fit through. The only thing she could think of was to try to talk her way out of this, or distract him somehow long enough to get away, to run back for help. But help, she remembered, was a good way off. She was still vibrating from amphetamines and fear, and her brain was addled with the residual effect of the drugs, the lack of sleep, and the terror of her situation. She needed to buy some time.

  With a rasping breath, she turned the knob and opened the door. He was leaning against the wall of the hallway, as though he were waiting for her outside a public restroom.

  “Better?” he asked.

  “Uh, yeah. Thanks.” He draped an arm around her shoulders and steered her back into the living room. The closet door stood open the way he’d left it. Joy tried to avoid looking at the gaping dark hole and what it foreboded.

  “Are you hungry?”

  Her stomach felt sick, but it also burned from lack of food, and she knew eating would help clear her mind. “Yeah, kind of.”

  He sat her down in the kitchen chair farthest from the door. A surreptitious glance told her that the bolt was locked and there was no key in it, though she knew she wouldn’t have made it very far. He made her a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk. She ate it slowly while he sat across from her, lit a cigarette, and smoked it leisurely, watching her with a kind of pleased power. She tried not to cry, but the peanut butter stuck on the lump in her throat, and she forced sips of the milk to wash it down. She could get through only about half of it. She wanted to ask for a cigarette to calm her nerves, but she doubted it would help much.

  When she finished, he washed her plate and cup and put them carefully away, then came and stood in front of her.

  “Now, I’ve got to go back to work for a few hours, and then I’ll come home and we’ll have a little more fun.”

  Joy’s lids fluttered, blinking back tears at the malicious sound of the word fun. “I think I’d better go home. My dad will be really worried about me. Maybe I could come back later.”

  He laughed. “No, I don’t think so. I told you, I’ll let you know when it’s time to go.” He reached down and unbuckled his belt. “But before I leave, I think you need to show me what you can do. You’ve been wanting to show me you’re a big girl.”

  Reaching behind Joy, he turned her chair so that she was directly facing his crotch, and then he unzipped his pants, grabbed Joy by the back of the hair, and forced her to face him.

  “Time to play,” he said. “And then the toy goes back in the closet, all neat and tidy.”

  Joy was frozen with fear. She could think only one thing.

  Daddy, help me.

  Chapter 37

  Luke sat rigidly in the kitchen chair. Whitney kept one hand on his knee, but it was unresponsive. He was locked in a kind of anguished hell from which there would be no escape or relief until he got his daughter back. And now, Whitney thought, he has to deal with this.

  “So she just disappeared? You have no idea where she went?” Pam asked accusingly. Joy’s mother was a heavyset woman, with yellowed teeth and lines around her mouth from sucking on one cigarette after another. Her body looked as though it had been used up a long time ago, like a pillow in which the stuffing had pilled and separated into lumpy parts. She wore far too much makeup around her bloodshot eyes, and her voice was both shrill and taunting.

  “We told you,” Whitney offered again, struggling to keep her voice level. “She left for school, she went to the bus stop, and then she didn’t show up in any of her classes. She’s been late so often that they waited until about one o’clock to call me.”

  “Why didn’t they call me?” Pam spit at Whitney. “I’m her mother.”

  A thousand responses flew through Whitney’s head, the foremost being, Because they know you don’t care, but she held her tongue.

  Luke stirred himself enough to speak. “Listen, Pam, I know this is hard for you too, but the important thing is to get her back, not to accuse each other.” He fini
shed the line as though he would like very much to accuse her, but he was beyond that. “I need to know if you have any ideas about where she might have gone, or who she might have contacted.”

  Pam’s eyes narrowed to rheumy slits. “Don’t you dare try to put this on me. She ran away from you—and her.” She threw a contemptuous look to Whitney, who took a deep breath and clenched her hands into fists to try to contain her outrage.

  “The detective will be back over here in a moment, and he’s going to ask you all these questions,” Luke went on as though she hadn’t spoken. The truth was, he didn’t care how angry or spiteful the woman was, only that she might be of some use. “So maybe you could use this time constructively to make a list of who she’s been hanging out with.”

  “I don’t know!” Pam blew smoke out of both nostrils and sagged back in her chair like an old dragon with glutinous scales. “She’s always off somewhere. I’m not a goddamned private eye.”

  “No,” Whitney said coldly, mimicking Pam’s earlier tone. “You are her mother.”

  Pam held up the hand with the cigarette, pointing a smoking finger at Whitney, and her voice rose viciously. “Don’t fucking talk to me like that!”

  “Stop it.” Luke’s voice was commanding and flat. “This is not about you, Pam; this is about our daughter.” Pam fell silent in the wake of his cold strength and fury. She looked down and pretended to be disinterested, but his power was impossible to deny. “Now,” Luke continued, “you think about everyone who might possibly be able to help us, especially any of the scum you let her hang around with.”

  Pam snorted, but there was admission in it. Not guilt—she seemed unredeemable in terms of taking responsibility—but there was no denying that she knew Joy had been hanging out with a bad element.