Fear itself: a novel (10 page)

Pool shook her head regretfully. “Sorry, no overtime.”

“I won’t put in for it.”

“Maheu wants me to log your hours. I’d fudge it, but your ID logs you in and out every time you go through a door. Then there are the gate logs and the—”

“It’s okay, I understand. And thanks for the tip about the, you know…” Linda tapped her own bare ring finger.

“Don’t mention it.”

“No, I—”

“I mean that literally,” said Pool. “Don’t mention it.”

The drive back to Georgetown was a typical Beltway nightmare. At the 66/495 maze, an SUV cut over into Linda’s lane, nearly clipping the Geo’s front bumper, and when she hit the horn, the driver gave her the finger. Linda thought about flashing her shield at him, just to give him a scare, then remembered that the days when you could cow somebody with a badge were long gone—nowadays you had to have a weapon to back it up.

Not that she would have drawn her weapon on a civilian over a traffic dispute even if she had been packing. But Linda had learned over the years that being armed changed the way a woman, especially a small woman, thought about herself in relation to the world. And now that she was no longer strong enough or steady enough on her feet to make use of the martial arts training she’d received at the Academy, it seemed to Linda that the Bureau should have
insisted
she carry a gun, at least until or unless she developed any optical or cognitive symptoms.

But there was no sense letting her mind wander down that path, Linda reminded herself. The FBI wasn’t fair, the disease wasn’t fair, and life wasn’t fair—big hairy deal, film at eleven. Better to concentrate on her job. Because she still had a job to do, an important one—the only hang-up was that until God in his infinite fucking wisdom decided to get Maheu off her ass, she’d have to do it on her own time.

The Georgetown brownstone was dark when Linda got home, which was not unusual: Jim and Gloria Gee were both attorneys, dinkies (double income, no kids) who dined out more often than in. Gloria had left a note for Linda—”dinner and a movie, back late”—on the kitchen table, along with the classifieds, which she had thoughtfully opened to the apartment rentals. Not a particularly subtle hint, thought Linda—somehow things had gone from the
stay-as-long-as-you-need-to
stage to the
don’t-let-the-door-hit-you-in-the-ass-on-your-way-out
stage without any intermediary steps.

Linda glanced through the listings while her pot pie nuked, but without much hope. She already knew what she’d find in her price range—diddly—and wondered again whether she ought to take Pender up on the offer he’d made toward the end of the party last night (Linda hadn’t split early after all) of a spare room in the old house above the canal. Be nice and peaceful out there—unless of course Pender had ulterior motives. Then she looked down at herself and laughed. Yeah, right—you’re a fucking femme fatale. It’s the ankle braces—they drive men wild.

After dinner Linda went into the living room and logged on to the Gees’ computer, set up a phony Netscape user profile for an alter ego, then accessed phobia.com, the PWSPD Association web site, and signed into the chat room, selecting a user name of
Skairdykat
and a password of
boo.
The chat room counter went from 0 to 1—Linda was alone. She clicked onto the archives, read back a few weeks until she had the feel of the lingo, then began typing her first entry into the dialogue box:

(No need to narrow the age or sex down yet; if he bites, we can set up a meeting and have our choice of decoys in place.)

(Might as well use the snakes—it’ll sound more believable than if you make something up.)

(Keep it vague—if you get any nibbles, you can improvise something later.)

(How to put this? Don’t want to be too obvious, but if the killer is using the PWSPD web site for trolling, he’s going to want to take it private as soon as possible.)

(Anything else? Not yet. After all, you’re trolling, too. Graceful exit.)

After reading her entry over and making a few minor corrections, Linda positioned the cursor on the
SUBMIT
box, took a deep breath, then with a single click of her mouse turned poor Skairdy into a piece of bait dangling from a hook somewhere in cyberspace.

Dorie opened her eyes and took stock. Her forehead hurt, and there was a little knot—she must have hit the floor with her head, or the corner of the table on her way down—but there was no blood and no egg, just a tender spot above the hairline. At least you didn’t break your nose again, she told herself—it’s already got all the character it can stand.

Shaken, she sat up slowly, careful to keep her back to the window. Dorie had been dreaming about masks, avoiding them, and fainting at the sight of them for as long as she could remember. But having hallucinations, fainting over masks that aren’t even there—that would be a new and disturbing development.

Unless of course there really
was
a mask in the window. But the only way to tell for sure would be to turn around, and she wasn’t ready for that, not with her head still pounding and her heart racing and the room spinning and her stomach…

Whoops, here it comes.
Dorie turned her head to the side just in time to save her clothes. When she finished vomiting, she crawled a few feet away and collapsed full length onto her side, one arm extended like Adam’s on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Then she remembered reading someplace that headache, nausea, and dizziness were all symptoms of concussion, and that the last thing you should do was give in to the urge to sleep. She tried to raise herself up onto her hands and knees, but it felt as if she were fighting gravity on Jupiter—somehow the planet itself had grown impossibly heavy under her and was pulling her down toward that dreamless darkness.

Fight it, she told herself as she sank back down to the kitchen floor, her head pillowed on her folded arms. Got to fight it. But by then she could no longer remember what she was supposed to be fighting against, or why. Still, she felt vaguely guilty.

“Later, Mom,” she murmured as the darkness closed around her again. “I promise I’ll clean it up later.”

*   *   *

Later.

Still on the floor, but on her back now, with her head pillowed on someone’s lap. Cool damp cloth on her forehead, the rim of a glass touching her lips. She smelled the musty-sharp, cough-medicine smell of brandy, sipped, swallowed, coughed feebly. Then her eyes fluttered open, a man’s hand came over her mouth to stifle her scream, and although the shock to her system was so profound it jarred her down to her soul, Dorie was not terribly surprised to see that the face leaning over her, hovering upside down only inches above her own, was wearing a leering Kabuki mask. Somehow, in fact, it seemed almost inevitable.

Missy opened her eyes early Thursday morning and found herself lying in a strange room, in a bed not her own. Frightened and disoriented, she started to call out for Simon, then remembered that she was on the fold-out sofa in Ganny Wilson’s living room, and that Ganny had promised her pancakes for breakfast. Only Ganny called them hoecakes—sometimes different people had different words for the same thing.

But as soon as she started thinking about food, Missy became aware of trouble inside her tummy and realized that that was what had awakened her in the first place. All that good Ganny cooking: pan-fried smothered chicken, corn fritters, southern-fried okra (Missy only ate the southern-fried part, not the okra itself), sweet potato pie, and after supper, all the little sesame seed cookies she could eat. Benni cakes, Ganny called them. And now it all wanted out all at once.

“Uh-oh,” Missy told Tweety, who was rustling around in her little square cage on top of the TV. “This is gonna be a stinky.” Then another
uh-oh
occurred to her as she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the sofa bed: she couldn’t remember where the potty was.

“Ganny! Ganny, I hafta make!” No answer. The cramps were getting worse. She pressed her palms tightly against the sides of her temple to make herself remember. Think, you silly—you went potty last night. Only Ganny calls it the toe-lit. Different people, different—

Then it came to her: you had to go through Ganny’s bedroom. Missy shuffled across the room, doubled over from the cramps, clutching the waistband of her pajama bottoms to keep them from falling down. Please don’t lemme make in my jammies, she begged Jesus. In her own house you couldn’t ask Jesus for things, because Simon said he didn’t
exist
there, but in Ganny’s house it was okay to ask him for help because he
existed
all over the place here: there were pictures and statues of him in every room—baby Jesus in the cradle, grown-up Jesus on the cross, and lying asleep in his mommy’s lap. Missy mostly didn’t remember their mommy, but Simon did.

Missy’s prayer was answered. She tiptoed through Ganny’s room without waking her up, did her stinky, and felt much better. When she came out of the bathroom, Ganny was still asleep under the covers, lying on her side with her face to the wall.

“Spoons?” asked Missy. Taking Ganny’s silence for assent, she crawled into Ganny’s bed and snuggled up against her back. But something was wrong—Ganny was so stiff it felt like cuddling up against a wooden chair.

“Are you sick?” Missy asked her, reaching around to feel Ganny’s forehead, the way Ganny used to feel hers when she was sick. “Nope, cool as a coocummer. C’mon, Ganny, wake up.”

But Ganny would not wake up. Gently, Missy tugged the neck of her nightgown. “Ganny, I’m hungry.” No response. Missy pulled the covers back, saw that a watery coffee-colored stain had spread across the seat of Ganny’s long white nightgown. “Uh-oh.” Now she understood—it was
Ganny
who had made in
her
bed and was so embarrassed she was pretending to be asleep. Missy had done that once herself, when she was little, and Ganny had gone along with it, stripped her jammies off, carried her into the bathroom, cleaned her up, changed the bedding, tucked her back in, never said another word about it.

Missy decided to handle this situation the same way—sort of. She crawled out of bed, pulled the covers back up over Ganny’s accident, and left the room to give Ganny a chance to clean herself up in private.

But when Missy returned to the bedroom, after what seemed to her to be a
very
long time—long enough to polish off a six-pack of little powdered doughnuts—Ganny still hadn’t moved. Quietly—somehow Missy understood she was in the presence of something solemn, though she wasn’t quite sure what—she walked around the side of the bed and saw that one side of Ganny’s face, the side she was lying on, was black and swollen, and that although Ganny’s eyes were open, she wasn’t looking out from inside them.

Horrified, fascinated, not quite ready to let herself understand yet, Missy edged a little closer and saw that Ganny’s slightly parted lips were crisscrossed with cobweb-thin threads of cottony white dried spittle, as if little fairies had been trying to sew them back together.

“Poor Ganny,” she said, as softly as she could—Simon was always telling Missy that she talked too loud. She knew she had to do something—but what? She couldn’t call the police even though she knew how to dial 911: Simon had drummed it into her head that if the police ever came to the house, they would end up taking her away from him or him away from her, and in either event, she was bound to end up in an institution for the feeble-minded.

Feebleminded:
that was the exact word he used, every time he gave her the speech, and Missy had come to fear the speech so much that she’d often be crying by the time he got to “in either event.” Then he’d stop, and dry her eyes, and promise to always be there for her, and she in turn would promise him that she’d never, ever call the police.

Nine-one-one was out, then. But she wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, either. At times like this, there was only one person Missy could turn to—only one person she was
allowed
to turn to: Simon.

The first thing to do was get dressed. No, undressed first. Missy stripped off her jammies, then dumped the contents of her valise onto the sofa bed. Picking out undies was easy—they were all white and the label went in the back. Socks were also easy—it didn’t matter what foot you put them on, so long as you picked out two of the same color.

As for pants and shirt, Missy knew you had to match them with the weather if you were going outside that day. With some difficulty she managed to unbolt the kitchen door, then stepped out into Ganny’s sunlit backyard wearing only her socks and panties, and felt the warmth of the autumn sunshine on her bare skin. Shorts and T-shirt weather for sure—sunglasses, too.