Maggie reached forward to touch the key in the car’s ignition. It wasn’t just the key to start the car. It was the key to a few more hours of freedom. Of hope.
She depressed the clutch, wincing at the squeak it emitted, wondering if he would hear it and guess her intentions. Then in one seamless motion, she turned the key, shifted the car into gear and slammed her foot onto the accelerator.
The Studebaker leapt from the shoulder of the highway, tires chirping as they tried to gain purchase. The car veered into the path of a speeding SUV. Maggie swerved, missing the SUV, but cutting off a sedan helmed by an old man. A chorus of horn blares rose from the cars around her, but Maggie was too busy mapping out her escape to care.
She saw the patrol car blast from the shoulder and barge into traffic. The rotating lights bored into the blackness of night and Maggie watched with horror as the car darted from lane to lane in search of its prey. The siren was on now, an angry, plaintive howl, and traffic slowed and pulled over, a red sea of taillights parting to let the patrol car—a veritable Officer Moses—through.
Maggie spotted a motor home ahead. Its blinker was on, signaling a desire to pull over for the long arm of the law, but faster, nimbler cars continued to speed by, preventing the lumbering hulk from easing to the right. Maggie accelerated. She pulled ahead of the motor home, then changed lanes until she was driving beside it in the right lane.
The driver of the motor home, capped by a red hat emblazoned with “Explore America” frowned at her. He waved his hand impatiently for her to move on. Maggie waved back. The man’s frown deepened. He hunched his shoulders and turned his attention back to the road ahead.
The police siren grew louder, building to a crescendo of electronic dismay, then began to fade. Maggie craned her neck. The patrol car had passed her and was weaving through traffic, its lights red like streamers through now-vacant lanes.
Rivulets of sweat streaked down her temples and beneath her arms. She spotted a 7-Eleven and pulled into the lot. She parked in the shadows alongside the building, her car nearly invisible to both motorists and passersby, and killed the engine.
Maggie took a deep breath. And then another. She felt a sudden, urgent need to move her bowels. She closed her eyes and waited, hoping the feeling would pass.
Laughter erupted outside her open window. Maggie started and looked over her shoulder. Three teenage boys taunted each other as they walked toward the building, undoubtedly hoping to fuel the evening’s festivities with Slurpees and PBR and God knew what else.
Maggie gazed into the flat light of the 7-Eleven window and considered her options. Obviously she couldn’t call the police. Or go home. Or go to work. She could call Constantine again, but she’d already left two voicemails that he hadn’t returned. Maybe he’d never call back. They’d both said some terrible things. Maggie wasn’t sure where the line between terrible and unforgivable was inked in a friendship’s invisible contract.
The phone rang. She answered without checking the caller ID.
“Maggie?”
“Gus. Oh, God, Gus.” Maggie bit the inside of her cheek and jabbed her fingernail into her cuticle, an old trick to control her emotions. “She’s dead,” she said. Her voice cracked on “dead.”
“What? Who’s dead?”
The grief Maggie had kept at bay oozed out of her like something foul and poisonous.
“Zartar,” she croaked. “Zartar’s dead. He got her. He killed her. I found her in her apartment.” Maggie’s throat ached as she tried to choke back the sobs. Hot tears streamed down her cheeks.
“Maggie! Maggie!” Constantine shouted over her keening. “What happened? Tell me what happened!”
Maggie swallowed again and again, trying to stop the hitching that came with every breath. She found her voice, broken, like the rest of her. “I got a reminder with Zartar’s picture. I got to her apartment as soon as I could, but I was too late. I found her in the bathroom. She had been…” Blood. Bone. Body. “She’d been murdered, Constantine. Stabbed. Beaten. Broken.”
He fell silent as he processed the horror of Zartar’s murder. “What did the cops say? Could they—”
“I didn’t talk to the cops. I had to get out of there.”
Maggie could hear the hysteria creeping into her voice. She could feel herself losing control. And for the first time in her life, she felt like letting go. Loosing the dark emotions that scuttled in the corners of her mind and letting herself sink into the oblivion of feelings unfettered by thought or intention.
But she couldn’t. She had to think. To act. To find Zartar’s killer and end this.
Maggie fought the undertow of helplessness and fear. She pushed away the images that slunk from her memory. She squeezed her eyes shut, swallowed hard and told Constantine about the animal impaled on the door, the murder scene, her frenzied 911 call and her panicked flight from the policeman who’d pulled her over.
“I’m so sorry, Mags,” Constantine said when she had finished.
“Me, too.” Grief sat in her chest like a rib spreader, pulling apart her heart. “And I’m sorry about…you know…earlier. What I said.”
“Me, too,” he said softly.
Maggie stared into the night, feeling unmoored in the blackness. “What now? My friend has been murdered. I’ve run from the police. I’m no closer to finding out who’s behind the appointment reminders and the murders—or how to stop them.”
Dread, familiar as a lover, caressed the back of her neck. Then she did something she had once sworn she’d never do but found herself doing more and more.
She asked for help.
The moon had just appeared at the horizon when Maggie arrived at Constantine’s apartment, propped up by distant billboards that seemed to sag beneath its yellowed, bloated mass. Maggie slipped out of the Studebaker, eased the car door shut, then crept up the walk, shivering under the blanket of darkening cobalt overhead.
She didn’t remember the drive there. She wound through the streets of the city on autopilot, her mind bobbing between anger and fear, images of death and loss on auto-repeat.
Constantine opened the door before she even had a chance to knock. He smiled at her, eyes cinching up into his trademark half-moons. She felt her eyes tear up. She had cried more in the past few days than she had since she was twelve. Maybe the stoppers hadn’t just come loose but disappeared.
Constantine drew her into his arms for a hug. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he said. She melted against his worn shirt, then pulled back, batting the newborn tears at the edge of her lashes.
Constantine swept his hand toward the interior of the apartment with an extravagant flourish. “I present to you,” Constantine said dramatically, “Chez Papadopoulos, swinging bachelor pad, cool hangout and part-time safe house.”
Maggie stepped onto the chipped parquet of the foyer. The small living room smelled of damp towels and a carpet invisibly tagged by the previous owner’s dog. A small TV blared from the kitchenette. Empty pizza boxes and a small cluster of beer bottles stood unabashed in the corner.
Constantine nodded, following her gaze. “I know, right?” He grabbed her hand and pulled her farther into the apartment. “Come in, come in,” he said as he closed and bolted the door. “First of all, are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” Maggie said. “Or at least on the way to okay.”
“No more reminders? No strange cars following you?”
Maggie shook her head. “I turned off my phone. I was afraid the police would track my location. Detective Nyberg called right after I talked to you.” She looked at him. “I let it go to voicemail.”
Constantine nodded, his expression suggesting he agreed that was sensible. He gently pulled Maggie toward his couch. She sank down onto the couch’s blue denim cushions, remembering how excited he was when he found it at a garage sale.
He looked into her eyes,
his own filled with concern as he searched her face. “You’re sure you’re okay? I mean, really, really sure? I’ll make coffee. I know I always feel better with a few grams of caffeine coursing through my veins.”
He was rambling. Her anxiety, Zartar’s murder, the catalog of reminders and victims had infected him, too. He rose, paced in front of the denim couch, then strode the few paces to his RV-sized kitchen. “I’ve got rotgut and rotspleen. Preference?”
Maggie flopped against the rough blue fabric and rubbed her temples. “Surprise me.”
She could feel one of her headaches coming on, the kind she had always suspected stemmed from a tumor spreading its roots into the hills and valleys of her gray matter. She massaged her skull harder, then stretched out on the denim couch.
“I’ve got work tomorrow,” Constantine called from the kitchen, “but I can take a long lunch. We can do some research. Go visit the workplaces of the people from your phone. We can also go see Travis at Reincarnated Phones, maybe even visit the police station. I don’t think you have anything to worry about with the cops. I mean, you were at the crime scene, end of story. They’ll just want to get your impressions and move on.” Constantine emerged with two steaming cups. “Here we go. Rotgut for me, rotspleen for you.”
His words barely registered as Maggie fell into a deep sleep.
Chapter 30
The Post was an island of prosperity in a sea of hopelessness. White, shiny and grand, it looked like a plantation house amid sharecropper cabins.
Maggie had taken the city bus to The Post after spending the morning alone with her thoughts. And Constantine’s collection of sci-fi fan fiction. She couldn’t just sit and wait for something to happen. She had to do something. Anything. So she left Constantine’s apartment and headed for the anonymity of public transit in case there was a BOLO for her Studebaker.
The bus dropped her near a parking lot across from the great building. An overpowering odor emanated from the little sliver of alley that separated the crowded lot from The Post. Maggie covered her nose with her hand. Maybe Zartar was right about despair having a smell.
Maggie walked quickly, pulling her hair off her sweat-slicked neck as she moved. The heat wave had become obstinate, refusing to relinquish its hold on the city despite the predictions of weathermen who wielded satellite images like meteorological divining rods. Even in the best of neighborhoods, fetid air seemed to bake in the city’s nether regions.
Maggie walked into The Post’s air-conditioned lobby. It was deserted. Dimmed spotlights frowned down at her from a ceiling seamed with acoustical tiles. A water cooler adjacent to the wide oak-veneered reception belched.
She rang a bell on the reception desk. Waited. No one appeared. She plucked two Kleenex from the floral dispenser and blotted her neck, her cleavage and under her arms.
“Can I help you?”
The voice came from behind her head, low and sonorous like a sonic boom. The man stood in the doorway of the men’s room, filling it, folds of flesh that had once been muscle encased in the faded blue of a well-worn rent-a-cop uniform. He crossed his arms under a name tag that read LESTER and glared. Maggie could see a copy of People magazine tucked into his pants pocket.
“Oh,” Maggie said, yanking the Kleenex from her armpits. “I didn’t see anyone.” She stuffed the Kleenex in her purse. “I thought the building had been abandoned. Or maybe taken over by brain-eating zombies lying in wait for their next victim.”
She chuckled. The security guard recrossed his arms.
Maggie paused to find the right lie. “I’m interning for Elsa Henderson.”
“Elsa Henderson?” The man rolled the name around on his tongue as if it were a foreign object someone had slipped into his onion dip. “Elsa Henderson is dead. Killed in a hit-and-run. Didn’t nobody call you?”
“No. Nobody called.”
The guard grunted. “Well. She’s gone. Guess the job is, too.”
Maggie looked down. “Killed? How terrible. I imagine she left a family. Plus a lot of loose ends here at work, too.” She glanced at the guard’s face. “Stories she was working on. That kind of thing.”
The big man grunted louder. “I wouldn’t know.”
“I wonder if Ms. Henderson’s work got turned over to another reporter. Maybe I could talk to someone…?”
Lester narrowed his eyes. “You’re talking to me, aren’t you?”
“Of course, of course,” she stammered. “I mean, someone who might know what Ms. Henderson had been working on and, um, if I can still get the job.”
“New positions are posted with HR, down the hall. Not sure if there are any more internships.”
“Okay, I’ll check that out. I’d really love to help with anything Ms. Henderson had been working on. It seemed like she always had something new and exciting lined up.”
Lester strode toward Maggie, turned into the corral that encircled the reception desk and sat down heavily. He looked at her impassively. “Ask for Denise in HR. She’s the one who handles new hires.”
Maggie’s shoulders slumped. “Okay. Thanks.” She opened her mouth to ask about Elsa’s boss, then clamped it shut. Lester the guard had begun working the People crossword. In pen. How courageous.
Maggie walked through the double glass doors and around the building, digging in her pocket for her phone. She’d call Constantine, give him an update, apologize for not waiting for him to join her and—
She barreled into a man partially concealed by the building’s noontime shadows.
“Oh my God,” Maggie said. “I’m so sorry. Are you all right?”
The man smiled, three rotting dental stumps poking through puffy red gums. He wore a set of old Walkman headphones, holding the end of its cord in his right hand as if it were a microphone. “Oh yeaaah,” he sang into the headphone’s plug, moving his head in time with imaginary music.
Maggie stepped to the side to bypass him. “Excuse me,” she said. He imitated her move. She stepped to the other side. He did the same.
“What do you want?”
She had compassion for those who suffered from mental illness. She had done an internship in a mental hospital and knew what a prison the mind could be. But she was not in the mood to dance the two-step with this guy.
“You’re looking for that lady what got herself killed,” he said slyly. “I heard you talking to Big Les.” His eyes gleamed, a kid with a secret he was dying to tell. His voice dropped to a stage whisper. “It wasn’t no accident, neither. It was murder.”
He had Maggie’s attention. “You know she was murdered?”
The man held the headphone plug at his mouth and spoke into it as if it were a Dictaphone. “I saw it.”
“You saw it?” Maggie couldn’t believe her luck.
He dropped the headphone cord and moved closer to Maggie. “I saw it happen before it happened.” Spittle sprayed from between his teeth, showering the air between them.
Maggie began to push past him, annoyance supplanting manners. She’d had enough. “You’re out of your mind.”
“Ain’t it grand?” He flashed a lopsided grin, then fingered the circle of Barbie doll heads that rested against his collarbone in a grotesque necklace. “’Course, doesn’t mean my eyes don’t work. Doesn’t mean I didn’t spy him spying on her. Especially when she talked to us.”
She stopped. “Who’s ‘us’?”
He gestured expansively at the cardboard shantytown that had sprouted in the shadow of the WPA-era Post building. “Us us. She used to pretend we were invisible, like they all do. Then she started chatting up some of the regulars.”
“Did she talk to you?”
“She tried, sure. But I know a spying spy when I see one. This whole newspaper thing is a cover for a government project.” He picked up Malibu Barbie’s head from his necklace and began chewing it thoughtfully. “But the lady
got some people to talk.”
“What did she get them to talk about?” Maggie asked.
“Whatever they wanted. Orpheus. Obi-Wan Kenobi. How to make a radish rosette.” He cackled. “Before she come along, a lot of them would talk to the ones in white. The angels who told them they’d chase out the incubus and the succubus and exterminate the bugs that crawl under your skin and in your brain.” He shrugged. “And maybe they did do the exterminations. But there was always a price to pay.”
“A price?”
He released Malibu Barbie from between rotten incisors and whispered into his Walkman jack. “Folks would get what they want. Demon removal. Brain pollen removal. Then they’d get disappeared.” He nodded. “At first I thought he was part of the telepathy war, because there was talk of men in government-issue clothes driving government-issue vans. And some of them are a little…” He tapped the side of his head. “You know.” Maggie nodded solemnly. “But I seen ’em. I seen ’em get in the van and go to the rotting place where staying isn’t an option, it’s a law. Like gravity.” He cackled again, delighted at his joke. Spittle flew again.
“And then I saw the Watcher looking at her while she talked to us. He was like an animated stick figure, that one. There but not there. And I could see what he was thinking because words flashed across his face like those neon bar signs. And I knew. I knew. Elsa the government spy lady was going to get disappeared, too.” His eyelids drooped to half-staff. “He watched. He waited. Then he made sure he’d quiet her mind like he had the others.”
Maggie felt like her stomach was being dragged to her knees. “Do you know who he was?” she asked. “Would you recognize him or his van or car or whatever?”
He swiped a grimy sleeve against his nose and poked at his eyes. Then brightened. “I took a picture.”
“Really?” Was it possible that she’d find Elsa’s killer so easily? Would she see the face of the killer who’d eliminated the lives of those who had graced her appointment reminder?
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