Expire

by Danielle Girard

  He nodded again.

  She turned the collar until the clasp faced Roy. “I need a key to this so I can take it off.”

  He shook his head, eyes wide. “You have to keep that on,” he said. “Mammy said so. Keep it on all the time.”

  “Because of Mammy.”

  He nodded.

  “Or because of Tyler?”

  “Because of Mammy and Tyler.”

  Not Dad, she thought. Tyler. Perhaps brothers, as she had suspected earlier. “I don’t have to keep it on because of Spencer?”

  He tilted his head. “Is Spencer in my school?”

  She shook her head. “No. Spencer is a grown-up, like me.”

  “Does he work at Walmart?”

  “No. Not at Walmart.”

  “Where, then?”

  “Spencer is just visiting. He doesn’t live here all the time.”

  “Like you?”

  “Like me,” she agreed. “How long am I visiting?”

  “Probably a long time. As long as Tyler wants.” His gaze floated up toward the ceiling and then back down to her. “Tyler doesn’t have rules. Roy has rules,” he added, pointing to himself. “But not Tyler.”

  She swallowed, fighting back tears.

  “You don’t want to stay here?” he asked.

  “I miss my home.”

  He nodded slowly.

  Somewhere outside, a car door slammed. Roy jumped to his feet, frantic.

  “Roy!” a voice called from outside.

  Schwartzman fisted the covers, freezing. Roy Butler’s voice. No, Tyler Butler’s voice.

  “Oh no. Tyler. I have to go.”

  He scurried from the room, gone too quickly for her to reinforce the need for a key or to ask for something to cut with.

  The slap of skin on skin rang out, followed by Roy’s shriek. A sob. Then a squeak of a metal spring stretching. A screen door. He was coming in. She lowered herself in the bed, turned her back to the door, and held her breath.

  Boots made their way across the wood floor, the sounds growing as they approached. Did he have a weapon? Could she launch herself at him and take him unaware? And then what? What if he wasn’t carrying the key? What if there was someone else with him? What if she couldn’t overpower him?

  The bedroom door opened, and his boots came heel-toe into the room. She sensed him looking down at her. She squeezed her eyes shut, gripping her arms to her chest. She was too rigid to be sleeping. He would know she was awake.

  His fingers brushed the hair off her forehead. Her pulse hammered against her ribs, throbbing in her head, in her arms and fingers.

  “Dr. Schwartzman,” he whispered, leaning close to her ear and drawing out her name like something bitter in his mouth.

  She fought to relax her whole body, to act as though the drugs had knocked her out. The smell of him invaded her nose—sweat and dirt and pine and alcohol reeking from his pores. She struggled not to flinch or turn away.

  “You’re quite a prize,” he whispered again. “I look forward to trying you out. Not long now.” He spoke the words slowly, pleasure in his voice.

  His lips touched her cheek. The feel of his tongue on her skin. “Think my little brother wants some sweet Bella, too. What do you say?” He let out a low chuckle that made her flinch. “You want to pop little Roy’s cherry?”

  Her head throbbed, the blood coursing through a loud rhythm in her ears. Issuing what she hoped sounded like a little sleep sound, she shifted onto her belly, lying flat. Let her hair fall across her face. Willed him to go away.

  “Just a few more days together, but I’m going to enjoy them.” She felt the covers shift off her legs, his fingers on the skin of her calf.

  Her eyes filled. She bunched her fists in preparation to fight. She would not let him touch her. He would not touch her.

  His hand groped through the cotton of her sweatpants.

  She swallowed a gasp.

  Prodding fingers cupped under her buttocks, probing at her.

  She held her breath, tried to shift again. But he had placed a palm on her back, pressing her down with one hand while the other dug between her legs through her clothes.

  What was she going to do? How could she fight him in this collar? But she could not let him touch her. She would not be raped. She thought of the baby. Her baby.

  Tyler froze.

  The screen door hissed open. The hinge squealed as it closed.

  Tyler let go of her. “Roy? That you?”

  A moment later came the long squawk of the screen door opening again.

  “Goddamn it, Roy!”

  Tyler removed his hands.

  Schwartzman took small, stilted breaths.

  His boots crossed the bedroom floor.

  She remained frozen, praying he would leave.

  And then his boot steps faded across the living room, followed by the slow squawk of the screen door.

  “Get over here,” Tyler shouted. A beat passed, followed by a high-pitched cry. Roy.

  Then the voices were gone. A car door opened, then closed.

  An engine and tires whispered in the snow. They were gone. Or Tyler was.

  Once the engine noise had receded into the distance, Schwartzman sat up slowly. Her muscles ached from the clenching, lactic acid saturating their fibers. He was gone for now.

  But he was coming back. There were no rules for Tyler. And there was no one here to stop him. Today, she had Roy to thank for the distraction.

  She wouldn’t get lucky twice.

  She needed a way out. And she needed it now.

  34

  Saturday, 8:10 a.m. EST

  Sitting up in the hotel room bed, Spencer stared at the ringing phone. As he stared at the number, there was a slight tremor in his hand.

  201-2777.

  How a phone number could bring it all back, like being a child again. He hadn’t called that number since high school. Hadn’t let it enter his consciousness since the first year of college. How was the phone number for his father’s church office still even in his head?

  But there it was.

  And someone was calling him from it.

  The phone whistled its trill little sound, his mother’s voice echoing in his head. Every day as he’d entered the house from school. “Call your father.”

  He imagined the black phone on the wall, its twisted cord short and tight beneath it. In his mind, he touched the tight coils, tried to thread his pinkie finger through them without pulling them loose. They had always seemed normal until that time he’d gone to Sadie Duncan’s house. After that, nothing about his house was ever normal again.

  Sadie Duncan’s was the one party he’d ever been invited to, in the first grade. Her family had the same black phone, but its cord stretched out so long that it almost touched the ground. He had wondered how his own family could get a long, stretchy cord like that. He would wind himself up inside it and spin across the kitchen.

  He had come into the kitchen for a glass of water in the middle of the party when the phone rang. Sadie’s mother put a finger up to him and answered the phone. Smiling and talking rapidly to whomever was on the other line, Mrs. Duncan had tucked the phone beneath her chin and moved across the kitchen, darting here and there like a hummingbird. She got a glass from the cupboard and crossed to the sink to fill it, returned to the doorway to hand it to him. Spencer watched, mesmerized as the cord stretched easily from one end of the room to the other as she worked.

  He had never seen his own mother talk on the phone. He had witnessed her answering the telephone, of course. When it rang, she gave it a menacing glance as though it threatened to ruin her day. Then she crossed to the wall to lift the shiny black receiver off the base. Ramrod straight and thin-lipped, she spoke in short, clipped sentences as though she had something much more pressing to attend to. When the call was done, she went back to one of her boring tasks—mending, cooking, polishing, or cleaning. Occasionally, he saw her at the kitchen table with a cup of steaming tea, reading.
But the only book she read was the Bible.

  Spencer stood from the hotel bed and crossed the room. His phone had stopped ringing. He set the phone down on the dresser and watched it, wondering if the caller would leave a voicemail. Imagining his father’s voice made it difficult to shake off the overwhelming sense of dread.

  Why would his father’s church be contacting him? There would be some mundane reason, he told himself. He’d been in the church on Monday. Had it only been five days earlier? He stared around the generic Detroit hotel room. That was all it was. Someone in the church had gotten his cell number, probably one of the old ladies who worked in the office, the same ones who’d been there when his father was alive.

  Perhaps he’d left something there at his mother’s service. But he knew he had not. He waited for the bell announcing a voicemail, but none came. He drew slow, even breaths, but the dread sat like acid in his stomach. No amount of breathing could dispel it. He crossed to the closet.

  There, he opened the hotel safe and removed the thin plastic sack that contained two prepaid phones. He unwrapped one, powered it up, and dialed the number he knew by heart.

  “Yeah,” came the answer.

  “I’m checking in,” Spencer said, walking purposefully across the room. It helped to move. Plus, hearing the solid sound of his own voice settled the discomfort in his stomach.

  “You don’t need to check in on me,” the man said with his hillbilly accent. Spencer had found the twang humorous at first, but not now. “We’re all fine here,” he added with a little hiss on the H. “Just fine.”

  Spencer felt a twitching in his jaw. The man was a Neanderthal, so he let it go. “How did she respond to the video?”

  “Just about passed out,” he said. “Guess your girl’s got a crush on that n—”

  “Watch it,” Spencer interrupted, talking over the last word.

  The man laughed his barking laugh. Spencer had known the man was a redneck idiot from the moment they’d first corresponded. Living in his hick town, working as an orderly across four counties, Tyler Butler had been barely surviving. With Caleb’s assistance, Spencer had gotten him a job with the San Francisco ME’s office, set him up in a little apartment, and paid him on top of his meager salary. Tyler was to keep track of Bella’s every move, as much as he could. He was never to go to her house or put himself in her life outside work, but while they were working together, Tyler was instructed to make Bella’s life uncomfortable, make her nervous. Scare her, even. But he had to do it without getting caught.

  But Tyler had fucked that up—lost his temper and threatened her, called her a kike. There was no going back to his job at the morgue after that. Tyler had begged for another chance. Begged like a child. Spencer was not one for second chances, but Tyler’s location in northern Idaho fit well into this part of his plan.

  But now the man had chewed through Spencer’s remarkable patience. Spencer calmed himself by imagining how satisfying it would be to wring the man’s neck. The job could have been the easiest $50,000 this guy ever earned—or would ever earn. But each conversation made Spencer all the more certain that Tyler Butler wouldn’t live to collect his money.

  “You know our agreement,” Spencer said. “I’ll call in and check on things when and as often as I see fit.”

  “Yeah, well, you checked in, so we’re done. I got things to tend to here,” Butler said. “Got to make sure your girl’s in good hands, you know.”

  “Be careful, Mr. Butler,” Spencer warned. “We have a very specific deal, if you remember.”

  “Yeah, I remember. Seems like there ought to be a bonus in it. A little incentive not to taste the cake. I got a look at the frosting, and man, it ain’t easy. You get what I’m saying?”

  “You ought to watch yourself, Mr. Butler.”

  “Yeah? And what’re you going to do about it?”

  “There is the matter of your compensation.”

  “Oh, you’ll pay me, all right,” Butler said. “I’m the one in charge here. I’ve got the goods. Don’t go threatening me.” With that, Butler ended the call.

  The rage settled into his limbs as Spencer sank onto the edge of the hotel bed and stared at the ugly maroon carpeting. He was still due in Cleveland and Richmond and had four more investors to meet. He had the Scala business to finish. But suddenly, none of that mattered. He could not leave Bella with that man. Spencer had thought Tyler would be satisfied with money, but men like Butler weren’t smart enough to know what was good for them.

  Tyler Butler thought he had five days left with Bella. In fact, he didn’t even have forty-eight hours. Again Spencer chastised himself for forgetting to empty the final safety deposit box. He could have been on his way to her by now.

  But it had to be done. He considered Bryce Scala. That, too, was a loose end that needed tying. Scala would be back in Florida now, so Spencer would have to rely on Caleb’s help.

  Caleb. Spencer tucked the burner phone into his laptop bag to dispose of later and thought about how he would break the news to Caleb. One way or another, he would, because if something happened to Bella, everything he’d gone through was for nothing. He wasn’t Tyler Butler. He couldn’t just pick up any woman and be satisfied. It was only Bella. It had always been only her. He would go back to Greenville, collect the contents of the safety deposit box, and call Caleb from there. Get his help with Scala. Make it up to him another way. Caleb knew he was good for it.

  Then he would go to Bella.

  His phone buzzed from the dresser. A voicemail from his father’s church. Spencer deleted it without listening. He didn’t need another omen. It was crystal clear what he needed to do.

  35

  Saturday, 7:55 a.m. PST

  Hal woke with two thoughts in his head. One, that a week had passed since Anna had been taken, and two, that he remembered where he’d seen gold paint. When he’d been walking around Union Square after the stabbing, he had noticed a series of flyers announcing an upcoming art show for next weekend. The posters were black with gold foil letters, but across the bottom of each was a slash of gold paint. That night, he had watched a couple pull one down and carry it away after the woman recognized the artist’s name. Only in the hours of sleep did he recognize that the gold strip on each flyer was slightly different, longer or shorter, the brushstrokes bolder or less noticeable. It occurred to him that it might have been the artist who had added the paint to each one.

  Out of bed, Hal got a cup of coffee and shared his theory with Hailey over the phone. After that, he’d gone to Union Square to collect a flyer that Roger could compare to the paint found on the victim’s shirt. With the flyer dropped at the lab, he and Hailey planned to go to the gallery and speak to the artist.

  Hopefully, it wouldn’t take Roger much time to provide a reasonable guess about whether the paint was a match. Hal longed to jump on this one lead and force it into whatever hole it had to fit to close this case. He knew that wasn’t how it worked, but his patience had worn thin.

  He slid into the department car with Hailey and buckled his seat belt. She had offered to drive, and he had agreed. His nerves didn’t need the added irritation of San Francisco traffic. They drove in silence, the soft rock on the stereo the only noise in the car. Hal knew she had plenty of questions, and he was grateful he didn’t have to answer any. She was turning onto Montgomery Street in the financial district when his phone rang.

  Telly’s name appeared on the screen. He wondered if the agent had found something definitive on the death of Spencer MacDonald’s mother. Or if he was calling to remind Hal that today was his last day on the job. That the bureau would be pulling him after today. “What’s going on, Telly?”

  “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

  “Yes, but tell me what’s going on.” The fear constricted his throat, corking his voice, which came out tight and strange.

  “Two things.”

  “Tell me.”

  “First, MacDonald is leaving Detroit early, and he’s skippin
g the rest of his stops. He’s changed his flight to return directly to Greenville.”

  Hal froze against his seat. “Why?”

  Hailey glanced over at him, her expression questioning.

  “No idea,” Telly admitted. “We had his itinerary flagged, so we got an automatic notification from the airline.”

  Hailey turned west on Pine Street and started up the hill. They were getting close to the gallery. He leaned forward and read the street signs, trying to focus on both her and Telly. “But you’re still on him? You’ll go, too.” It was not a question.

  “I think the gallery is here somewhere,” Hailey said as they reached Quincy. “Can you check the address?”

  “Uh,” Telly stuttered across the line.

  “Telly,” Hal repeated. “You are going to Greenville.”

  “Today was my last day. I told you that. I’ve been called back to Dallas right away.”

  “You’re on this case until we find her,” Hal said, his voice rising. “That was the deal.”

  “We’ve got a situation in Dallas—a serial bomber. Haven’t you read the news?”

  Hal tried to remember the last time he’d seen a paper or checked the news on his phone. Before Anna was taken.

  “I’m sorry, Hal,” Telly said.

  Hailey pulled to the curb and checked her phone before driving half a block more. The gallery was just ahead. On the front window in black script were the words Right Wrong, the name the artist went by. The familiar swath of gold paint underscored the words.

  Hailey put the car in park and looked over at him.

  “That wasn’t the deal, Telly. I’m dealing with a double homicide. I need you to go there.” He nodded to Hailey, who shut off the engine and cracked her door.

  “Three bombs, six injured, and one dead. In the past two days,” Telly said. “I’m needed in Dallas.”

  “I got a promise that you’d stay on him,” Hal said, his voice thinning, desperate even as anger filled his chest and burned his throat. He knew he should stop, but he couldn’t. The FBI had to follow MacDonald. Someone had to watch him. “They gave me the agent just out of high school, but that was okay because there was a promise that you’d be there. That you’d follow him.”