Ashley Bell: A Novel (49 page)

Paranoia of a reasonable potency was an essential survival tool. But intense and universal paranoia of the everyone-I-know-is-an-evil-space-alien variety was the mantra of a loser. The landscape promoted disorientation. Small clusters of buildings punctuated the barren vastness, but at that hour all were dark, seemingly long abandoned. In the black land, a glow only far to the north. Square miles of yellow and cold-blue scintillation. But not a light that confirmed civilization. An unearthly fungal phosphorescence. Hot plains of radioactive glass. As Bibi drove through the ever stranger and more hostile night, as it seemed that she had driven out of California into a place with no name and no exit, she felt herself traveling a narrow line between sanity and derangement, her balance precarious.

In spite of the antibiotic ointment that the tattoo artist had applied, under the layers of enwrapping gauze, the four words on her right wrist burned as if something worse than inflammation must be at work. Bacteria eating through the flesh. Or a toxic chemical imparted with the ink. The eighteen letters stung. Itched. She had been told not to scratch. She’d left the analgesic cream and fresh bandages at the motel. Nothing with which to change the dressing. No time to change it, anyway. She wondered if the increasing irritation of the eighteen small wounds might arise from an
intentionally
imparted infection. But since she had chosen the parlor at random, worrying that the tattooist might be in league with Terezin was as flaky as the evil-space-alien theory.

When for a few minutes she encountered no traffic moving in either direction, she wondered if roadblocks had been set up behind and ahead of her, and she waited to turn a bend or top a rise and find an execution squad of Wrong People. On the other hand, when a vehicle appeared in the oncoming lane, she tensed in expectation that the windshield of the Honda might dissolve in a rain of gunfire. Every motorist closing in behind her might be a tail, and when she cut her speed to let him pass, he always lingered alongside her—or she thought he did—to look her over with malevolent intent.

She was still fifteen or twenty minutes from Sonomire Way when a disturbing sound rose above the rubber-on-road hum and the drone of the engine. The flapping-flopping noise was like the struggling of a freshly caught fish in a sportsman’s creel, and at first she thought that it must be a tire shedding tread. In that case, she would have felt such a problem translated to the steering wheel, a strong pull toward the deterioration, but she didn’t.

A subsequent silence didn’t reassure Bibi, and after less than a minute, the noise came again, this time perhaps from under the car. Something that had slipped loose must be slapping the pavement. But the Honda continued to purr along, and no warning lights appeared on the instrument panel.

The third time she heard the sound, she realized that the source was within the vehicle. On the backseat. Or on the floor behind the front passenger seat.

Then she understood what it must be.

The previous night, asleep in the armchair in her father’s office, above Pet the Cat, she had dreamed the truth of what had happened in her bedroom when she was not quite six years old. The truth that she had hidden from herself by using Captain’s memory trick of fire and forgetfulness. Not the whole truth, but part of it. In the dream, she had not revealed to herself the source and nature of the threat. Only that something malicious had come for her. Had come for her and crawled her room. Had gotten under the covers with her.

And here it was again.

After a silence in which the thing perhaps nursed its desire and considered its options, the slick and torsional sound rose again, as if this must be some slippery denizen of murky water and swamp mud, out of its element but hardly deterred, determined to make its way through this unfamiliar environment, toward what it wanted, needed. Toward her. To Bibi, it sounded as though the thing was trying to get purchase on the back of the front passenger seat, or to squirm up the transmission hump and onto the console between the seats, which should have been an easy bit of terrain to conquer.

On a straight stretch of highway, Bibi turned her head to look back and down, over the console. The pearly luminosity of instrument-panel gauges did not reach as far as the rear compartment of the car, where shadows pooled and moonlight rushing past the windows revealed nothing. If something coiled or quivered on the back floor, yearning to climb, and if it was watching her, its eyes did not shine in the gloom.

Starboard tires stuttered on the stony shoulder of the roadway. Bibi looked forward, pulled the wheel to the left, and brought the Honda onto the pavement again, just seconds short of a plunge off a low embankment.

Whether it was a sign of madness or common sense—or repressed knowledge guiding her without her understanding—Bibi told herself that if only she refused to hear the creature, refused to grant it existence, imagined it gone now and forever, she would be rid of it. Had that strategy worked for her when she had been a terrified child? She could not remember.

After a minute and the better part of another, the theory seemed to be confirmed, but then a new sound arose from the back of the car, what might have been a voice or an attempt at a voice. Low and wet, a gutteronasal clutch of syllables that formed no words but expressed nonetheless a craving, a coveting, a ferocious need, and such bitter and implacable rancor that mere hatred paled before it.

After calling Bibi a syphilitic little whore, Dr. St. Croix took such pleasure in the idea of her former student being in trouble with agencies dedicated to national security that the hardness went out of her face and the Sunday softness returned, though her smile was akin to a vindictive sneer and would have been regarded with disquiet had she been in a roomful of church folk.

“I knew that deceitful bitch would step into deep shit one day. I hope it’s deep enough for her to drown in it. She thinks she’s more cunning than she is, and she took me for a sap who could be easily intimidated. Imagine a seventeen-year-old neophyte daring to attempt to manipulate a woman as experienced and connected and respected as I am. The little fool.”

Paxton had a moment radically out of character for a Navy SEAL, a Bette Davis moment in which he wanted to throw his drink in the professor’s face and say something so cutting that she would need the rest of the year to rebuild her ego. But that was not an effective technique of interrogation. Loyal Pogo was not as good as he should have been at concealing his rage, and before the professor might glance at the kid and read his revulsion, Pax smiled at him and winked and raised his own glass as if in a toast, though by the gesture he meant to say that taking a drink would be better than throwing a punch.

“I will do anything I can,” St. Croix said, “
anything,
to help you convict Ms. Blair of whatever she’s done. I don’t need to know anything that’s classified about the case, if only I can hope that she’ll get something between life in prison and the death penalty.”

She favored Pax with a seductive smile, and he said, “You have every reason to hope, ma’am, but you understand that I can’t share even the smallest details of the pending indictment.”

The professor brightened further, spread her arms so that the sleeves of her colorful tunic flared like butterfly wings. “What a lovely word—
indictment.
That’s all I need to hear. I am in such a superlative mood, you cannot know, you cannot possibly know. I was about to start forming tarts when you rang the doorbell, so might I get on with that while you ask your questions, Chief Petty Officer?”

Pax could not quite compute the words
forming tarts,
but he said that, yes, of course she could continue with what she had been doing if it didn’t interfere with his inquiry.

As the professor went to one of the two Sub-Zero refrigerators, Pax tried the Scotch with half-and-half. He was surprised to find the whisky had not curdled the cream, but even more surprised that Dr. St. Croix hadn’t curdled it.

To medicate his outrage, Pogo had consumed most of his drink in one long swallow.

Barefoot and blithe, Solange St. Croix returned to the island with a bowl, over which was draped a dish towel. She whipped off the cloth to reveal a large ball of risen pastry dough. “I love to bake. I
adore
it.” From cabinets she retrieved a baking sheet and twelve white-ceramic tart cups, which she also brought to the island.

She refreshed her drink and offered to refresh theirs. When Pogo accepted a second round, St. Croix smiled at him the way a fox smiled at a tender rabbit. Bartending finished, the fastidious baker washed her hands at the sink. She moved always as though she assumed she was being watched with erotic interest.

When she returned to the island and began pressing buttery pastry dough into the tart cups, she twinkled her blue eyes at Pax and said, “Now, what is it you want to know about Ms. Bibi Blair? Were her parents drunk, doped up, or just tacky when they gave her such a frivolous name? Never mind. Sorry. You’re the one who needs to ask questions.”

Pax wondered at her quick and unqualified acceptance that they were something they had never claimed to be, that she deduced from a SEAL tattoo and little else that they had some law-enforcement role and an official mission. Perhaps the days were long gone when college professors built their courses with respect for logic and reason, and likewise conducted their lives with that same respect.

“Well,” Pax began, “as you might imagine, we’re most interested in why Ms. Blair was thrown out of the university writing program.”

Raising her eyebrows, St. Croix said, “Nowhere is it written that she was ejected for any reason. The story is that she resigned of her own volition, perhaps because she found the coursework too difficult or the atmosphere of academic excellence not to her taste. Who can know but her?”

Pax smiled, shook his head. “Give us some credit for exhaustive backgrounding, Doctor. We know from various sources that there must have been something more to it. And we suspect that whatever she did to get herself forced out, back then, is an example of the behavior that makes her of such great interest to us now.”

“Exactly,” Pogo said, apparently concerned that he might seem superfluous and therefore suspicious.

St. Croix’s attention was less on Pax and Pogo than on forming tarts. “I gave a writing assignment. The students were to choose someone they knew but whose residence they had never visited. The person could be another student, a university staff member, or one of their instructors. This was to be a test of their powers of observation and psychological insight, as well as their sense of characterization and their
imagination
. Each student was asked to create a richly detailed, vividly described, coherent, credible living environment for that person, whether it might be a dorm room or an apartment or a house. Ms. Blair chose me for her subject.”

“Were you bothered by that?”

“Not at all. I’d put myself forward as an acceptable subject. I expected any student who chose me to have some fun with it. I am not thin-skinned. When Ms. Blair turned in her piece, I wasn’t surprised that she described the first two floors of this house with accuracy. There had been lovely parties here, quite wonderful occasions, when faculty members and students of previous classes had gathered in a unique atmosphere both celebratory and intellectual. No, I wasn’t surprised, but I
was
disappointed that she’d clearly sought out some of those people and grilled them about the layout of the house, the décor, the smallest of personal touches. This was supposed to be a
creative
exercise, not reportorial. Her descriptions were splendid, her writing unusually colorful and nuanced for a girl her age, but it was nonetheless something of a cheat to do what she’d done. Then, as I continued reading, much to my shock, I discovered that it was more than cheating, it was a crime.”

St. Croix focused so intently on forming the tart shells that when she fell silent, Pax realized she must be using the task at hand to direct her energy away from the anger that, when expressed, made her look years older and hard and unappealing.

“Crime?” he asked. “What crime?”

Finishing the fifth cup, the professor said, “Burglary. Well, to be scrupulously fair, no, not burglary. She didn’t steal anything, as far as I could tell. They call it housebreaking. She came into my house uninvited, when I wasn’t here, and she roamed every corner of it, all the way through the third floor, which is not and never has been open to most of my guests. It was a monstrous violation of my privacy. My third floor is sacrosanct.”

Pax knew that Bibi wasn’t capable of such a thing, but of course he didn’t leap to her defense. He only glanced warningly at Pogo.

After sipping her drink, St. Croix met Paxton’s eyes. “Why are you called a chief petty officer? There’s nothing petty about you, so far as I can see.”

“Oh, it’s just the Navy’s quaint way of differentiating between commissioned and noncommissioned officers. So we don’t forget our place in the scheme of things.”

“So we don’t get uppity,” Pogo said, proving that he had no talent for either deception or interrogation.

Pax expected that his answer to St. Croix’s question might make her wonder if such a minor officer would likely be dispatched on an official mission in the civilian sphere, but then he realized from her half smile and the directness of her gaze that the woman hoped to let him know the door was open for a more personal conversation and anything to which it might lead.

He asked, “How did Ms. Blair force entry? Break a window, bust a lock?”

“No evidence of how,” said the professor. “Which is what made it so unsettling. Clearly, she obtained a key. I was mystified as to how she could have done that. But I changed all the locks.”

“You’re certain she had a key?”

After taking another sip of her drink, St. Croix returned her attention to the pastry dough and the tart cups, making no further eye contact as she continued. “I am a strong and complex woman, Chief Petty Officer. I contain multitudes, as the poet said. I would have to be complex, with considerable depths, to have achieved my level of success and renown in the viciously competitive worlds of academia and literature, where the only sport more popular than logrolling is character assassination.”

She fell silent once more, and Pax knew better than to press her.

After she finished forming the sixth tart shell and started on the seventh, St. Croix said, “Image is everything in the worlds I inhabit. I guard my image as fiercely as other people might guard their families, their fortunes, their sacred honor—if they believe there is such a thing. I am the founder of the most successful writing program in any university in the country. I am known to have an unerring eye for genius and the ability to nurture it. Certain of my former students have been invited to join the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Three have won the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction, two have won the National Book Award, and two have won Pulitzers. The lesser awards are too numerous to recount. I am a starmaker. For someone in my position, an image of Spartan dedication to the written word at the expense even of my personal life, a reputation for cool indifference to everything but excellence in literature, makes me a laudable eccentric and an icon. My eminence would not be materially affected even if I publicly acknowledged that a few of the most renowned graduates of my program are pretentious fools of little talent. But with a woman as complex as I am, there are aspects of my personality that wouldn’t be regarded as compatible with my public image and would in fact diminish it greatly. Therefore, I keep those interests strictly private and indulge them only beyond the view of those who would be offended by them.”

Pogo sat goggle-eyed, as if his imagination were afire with images of her forbidden pursuits, as if he had forgotten that one of the controversial aspects of her personality that she felt the need to conceal was nothing more than an enchantment with Victoriana, the style and literature and perhaps the values of that age.

“Ms. Blair,” the professor continued, “wrote her little document of extortion as if imagining that I were a woman of more facets than a well-cut diamond. She wrote of my third floor as if she found its secrets charming and my unadvertised interests proof of the depth of my spirit and intellect. But of course that was butt-kissing meant to disguise her attempted blackmail. She was demanding my praise, my mentoring, my endorsement of her talent, my power to make her a star in return for her silence.”

Pax dared to say, “What if she was never in your house? What if she only accurately imagined your…private interests?”

Looking up from the tart shell, St. Croix regarded him with the pity of the intellectually anointed for those doomed by genes or by circumstance to ignorance. “No one has an imagination of such power, of such intuitive genius, to know with accuracy what occupies a place in which she’s never set foot. Her rich description of my third floor was as reportorial as what she wrote about the first two, not fiction but sleazy journalism, ninety-five percent on the mark. Hell, ninety-eight! The little bitch
was there
. She must have taken notes. That is a part of my life that I treasure to the extent that I rarely share it. The bed I sleep in most nights is on the third floor, not in my bedroom on the second. Only a trusted few have ever shared it with me, and none of them would have risked his relationship with me to conspire with that brazen, grasping little slut.”

Without being consciously aware of what she was doing, the professor had formed the seventh tart and then had torn it apart as if she were rending her former student’s throat. She threw down the mangled dough in disgust, wiped her hands on the dish towel, and resorted to her glass of Scotch and cream. If her equilibrium wasn’t restored by the drink, at least she realized that in her ranting she had not given them a clue as to the nature of the secret enthusiasm she indulged on the third floor. She couldn’t know that they had read Bibi’s writing assignment, so she could only suppose that they were imagining every perversion from bondage with violent flagellation to animal sacrifice. Their wonderment appeared to amuse the professor, for her face let go of the anger that stiffened it, grew soft with coquettish intent. She licked a milky smear from her lips and said, “If you would like to verify my accusations against Ms. Blair, I’ll let you read a copy of her piece and then take you up to the third floor to see for yourselves.”