Salter, Anna C (19 page)

There was also the small matter that I would go to jail for it. The law does frown on shooting people who are not armed. But that wasn't the main thing. The main thing was that I couldn't even imagine shooting anybody in cold blood, not even Willy.

This was the problem with me and Willy since he got out. He knew exactly what he wanted to do with me —whatever it was, and I truly didn't want to find out—but I didn't have a clue what to do with him.

But something had to happen tonight because I could not and would not keep living like this. I was going onto that hill with Willy, and I'd figure out what to do then.

I went straight out from the side of the house until I was far enough away that I knew I had to be behind Willy. At least he couldn't see the house if he was this far out, so unless he was leaving, I was going to come up behind him. It was also a good place to cross the stream. There were enough rocks that I didn't have to get wet and a lot of overhanging trees providing shade.

I crossed the stream on the rocks, feeling a little exposed. Shadow or not, I was still more visible crossing the stream than I was in the forest. But again nobody shot me and nobody grabbed me on the other side, and that was now my definition of success.

But once I got over, the questions came back: How smart was Willy? Smart. How smart? Smart enough to lure me into the woods? Smart enough to know I'd come after him if he stood there night after night staring at me until I figured it out? What would he have done if I hadn't? Lit a cigarette to get my attention? Turned on a flashlight?

The thought of Camille came back, blind with tape wrapped all around her head, while some aberrant asshole did God knows what to the rest of her. I shuddered, and my stomach started to turn. Was I really sneaking up on Willy? Or was he sneaking up on me? I looked down. Any step could be onto a trap.

I took a deep breath and tried to push the fear out of my mind. I wasn't sure anymore I should be out here, but I was still committed. I couldn't go back and huddle in the house waiting for him. I went forward more slowly than before, looking carefully at every step.

Thank God for New England forests. They are sparse enough that you can walk off the path and not have to bushwhack, at least at this time of year. The buds were just starting, and mostly the forest was filled with bare bushes. They were widely enough spaced that the lack of a trail wasn't a big problem. Things fill out some in the summer, and I would have made a whole lot more noise than I did now. Thank God it wasn't a Southern forest. I'd have sounded like a bear crashing through the woods if I ventured off a trail.

I took a deep breath. The whole thing of Willy having the nerve to hang around my woods just seemed so incredible. The forest had been my haven, and I was incensed that it was being used by a predator. But tell that to a mouse or a rabbit or just about any other creature in the forest. Life is a lottery in the forest. The damn screech owl in the distance had a taste for brains. You'd find rabbits in the forest where he had chewed off the heads so he could take the brains back and enjoy them at his leisure.

Oh, I knew what the politically correct thing was. The owl was killing to live and Willy was killing for the fun of it, and that was supposed to be some huge difference, but I don't really know how much difference it made to the rabbit. This moonlight-soaked haven of mine was more violent than any inner city.

And now I was part of it, more so than at any time in my life. I'd always been a visitor before. Tonight I was locked into that predator/prey thing like everybody else around me. Except for one thing —the rabbit didn't usually try to sneak up on the owl. Probably that was because she wouldn't know what to do once she got there, which was exactly my problem.

I wondered if animals romanticize the city as much as people romanticize the forest. I almost laughed as I thought of the rabbits lecturing their children on the moral superiority of the city: "At least humans don't usually eat somebody when they kill them, not like here."

I was getting giddy. Fear of a trap and the exhilaration of being invisible were mixing in my brain, and there were enough chemicals up there to make a junkie happy. Ahead of me was the ridge, and as I saw it, my heart started to beat double-time.

I stepped behind a tree for cover, crouched down, and stuck my head out to survey the scene. From where I was I didn't see anybody on the ridge, but I was still pretty far down the hill. I'd have to zigzag back and forth going up to the top of the ridge to make sure I covered the width of it. If Willy was waiting for me, he still had to spot me, goggles or not. I got ready to move and thought, "All right, fate, take your best shot, and then leave me alone till the next time." That crazy mantra always came back.

I had a fleeting thought of how stupid what I'd done would seem to most people. I had voluntarily chosen to be alone, at night, in the woods with a sadistic sex offender who was stalking me and most likely planning on killing me. Worse, a very bright sex offender who might well be counting the steps between me and the next snare.

Thinking about it, a wave of gut-wrenching, throw-up-time, blind panic started swelling in me. I grabbed the tree and held on. "Don't be stupid," I told myself. "This is still your arena more than his. You're only guessing that he's expecting you."

But what if Willy wasn't expecting me. Even then would he be likely just to stand there with no cover? Wasn't Willy the kind who'd set a few snares just in case? I remembered belatedly that Willy had been a scout leader among his many covers for child molestation. Had he been one of those woodsy-type scoutmasters?

I waited, and the panic started easing like the tide going out. My thinking didn't have a whole lot to do with it. It was just the way panic worked. It came in waves and, just like waves, receded.

"Goddamn it," I thought. I never had those until I was attacked. I sincerely hoped I didn't get one at some point when I needed to function in some important way, like, say, when I had a gun in my hand and Willy in front of it.

I hadn't pulled my gun yet. I don't believe a gun is some kind of magic talisman that protects you just by buying one, so I had gotten some serious training. The training said never pull a gun until you're ready to use it. I hadn't even located Willy yet. I started moving up the hill zigzag, running in a half-crouch from one tree to the next. The forest had grown quiet: By now the entire population was aware of a collision about to happen. Was Willy smart enough to listen?

I saw nothing till I got right on top of the ridge. I was moving in a crouching duck walk across the ridge when I spotted him. Even in the moonlight, there were so many shapes in the forest that I don't know if I would have spotted him if he hadn't moved. It was a slight movement, maybe shifting from one foot to the other, but it was enough.

I hit the ground. Willy was halfway down the hill and still pretty far away from me. All I could really see was a shape. He was standing in the shadow of a large tree, and I couldn't be sure which way he was looking. Had he heard me and turned around? Was he looking my way or at the house? I waited, but Willy didn't move again. I pulled open the Velcro opening to my fanny pack. It made a noise that in my mind sounded about as loud as thunder, but Willy still didn't move.

I got the gun out and started wiggling closer. If this was a trap, the only place he could be sure I would be was right here. The closer I got to him, the more likely it was I'd hit a snare of some kind.

Alarm bells were starting to go off in my head, but I put it down to the weirdness of the situation and my fear. I had to face the fact that I couldn't just shoot him, and any other scenario was pretty scary.

It was too hard to plan. I didn't have a plan. When people take their guns out, anything can happen; I just had to trust my instincts. It didn't even seem that important if he shot me —at least the goddamn thing would be over. It wasn't being shot that scared me anyway; it was being caught. My mind was racing. It seemed like I had fifty thoughts for every wiggle forward.

Willy moved again, another slight movement, and I stopped and held my breath. I was getting closer, and I was going to have to do something when I got there. I couldn't just watch him all night. I wondered suddenly what Adam would think of this. Not much. Well, fuck Adam. Adam didn't have an answer to this except to hide under his bed. I don't think so.

I realized Adam would be the only one who could figure this out. Both doors locked. Me, no doubt, dead in the woods in some very unpleasant way. Firewood on the floor. Adam would look at it, start futzing with the plug. I could see him shaking his head as he searched for footprints by the side of the house. No one else would even think somebody might do something this stupid. Adam would.

Willy crouched down, and I dropped my head to the ground. Had he heard something? Seen something? I was still fifty feet away. Too far. I waited. Several light-years passed. Willy didn't move again, and I started wiggling forward slowly: bush to bush, tree to tree, zigzagging toward Willy.

I made myself keep going. I knew the temptation would be to stop too soon, and I needed to get closer to have a clean shot if I needed one, but it was hard to keep going—a little like asking myself to crawl within striking range of a rattlesnake. And each foot forward made it more likely I'd hit a trap. Finally I was maybe twenty feet from Willy, and nothing bad had happened. I was close enough to call out and close enough I hoped to nail him if I needed to. I stayed prone on the ground, pulled the gun, and slowly extended both arms in front of me.

I fixed my gunsight on Willy, but I put my trigger finger on the trigger guard instead of the trigger. Training. Gun courses. Don't put your finger on the trigger until you're ready to shoot. I hesitated. It would take too long to move my finger if I needed to shoot. Basic rule. Don't put your finger on the trigger. Don't do it. I didn't.

My breathing was short and rapid. Goddamn it. It's hard to aim if you can't get your breathing under control. You were supposed to squeeze the trigger between breaths. What was I thinking about? I wasn't going to squeeze the trigger. Or maybe I was.

Suddenly Willy stood up, and my finger convulsed on the trigger guard. Had it been the trigger, I'd have shot. I started to move my finger to the trigger, then stopped. Something was wrong. Time stopped. It took my brain a moment or two to process the scene in front of me, but slowly it began to sink in. What was wrong with this picture?

It wasn't Willy. The silhouette was wrong. It just wasn't Willy. It couldn't be Willy. Even with a coat, even from the back, it wasn't Willy. Worse, the figure was small.

Jesus Christ. I put the gun on the ground and closed my eyes for a moment. The only thing I really feared about guns was that I'd shoot a fourteen-year-old some night who was breaking into my house to steal a stereo. Jesus Christ. I picked up the gun again and put it in the fanny pack. My hands were shaking. Tears were starting down my face. Jesus Christ. I didn't even know who was there, but it sure as hell wasn't Willy. And I didn't have a reason in the world to want anyone else dead.

I could have called out to the figure, but whoever it was might have a gun and might shoot in panic. I didn't want to start anything when I didn't know what was going on. I'd think about this later. I'd figure it out later. Right now I just wanted out of this.

I started crawling backward, away from the unaware figure now shifting restlessly, from one foot to the other, still watching the house. My God. I'd almost killed somebody, and I didn't even know who it was. I'd damn near shot somebody, and it would have been totally the wrong person. Willy would have loved that. Maybe that was the trap all along.

I was far enough away now. I got up and headed back the way I came. Who the hell was that? The tears kept falling.

But there was something else. Something about the way that figure moved was familiar. Had Willy enlisted someone I knew to help him? What revenge that would be—to con me into shooting some poor innocent kid, some kid I knew. How smart was Willy? Smart? How smart was I? Maybe the answer was "not very."

The figure on the ridge haunted me all weekend. I had dreams in which I pulled the trigger and then walked up afterward to find I'd shot a kid. As I got closer, the child always turned into Jordan. I woke up cold and disoriented with the metallic taste of grief in my mouth that I always got when Jordan was back.

The dreams didn't exactly surprise me. Probably I had damn near shot a kid—your basic horrifying possibility. And, too, anything that had to do with a hurt or dying child always brought up Jordan.

Besides, I knew some part of me thought I killed Jordan by going back to work. She died of SIDS at the day care, the first day I went back, and even though I knew infants died of SIDS with medical people standing over them, I had some crazy belief that it wouldn't have happened if I'd been there.

All this was on top of the bizarre business with Marv. It was miserable not being able to call him or stop by his house —I would have loved a little distraction—but his request was so odd I didn't even think about ignoring it.

Something very weird was going on. Surely there were reasonable explanations. Surely there were, like . . . like . . . well, who knows, maybe Willy was living there.

Right.

By eight o'clock Monday morning I was in my office. Actually, I was in my office quite a bit earlier, and by eight I was pacing. Whatever it was with Marv, I'd rather know than hang around wondering.

Ordinarily, he was late for everything except clients. But he wasn't late today. He was exactly on time, which I thought a very bad sign. I looked him over. His clothes were the same rumpled odd assortment of discordant colors as always. This was good. If he'd come in color-coordinated, I'd have panicked.

But his face was different. His face looked like a basset hound. Marv always had a bit of basset hound about him, but today he'd have won best of show.

I wanted to scream at him, "SO WHAT IS IT? CUT TO THE CHASE. WHY CAN'T I GO TO YOUR HOUSE? WHO'S THERE?" But I didn't. Marv's face told me he was miserable, and I started thinking about what he'd done for me when I came over the night I was so freaked out.

"What's up?" I said as casually as possible. There was enough anxiety in my voice to make any psychiatrist reach for his prescription pad, but Marv didn't seem to notice.

He sat down heavily in the chair facing my desk. "Michael," he said slowly. "I need to talk to you about something."

NO SHIT, SHERLOCK. COME ON. COME ON. GET IT OUT. I didn't say it. I just said, "Okay."

He ran his hand over his balding head and said, "I made a mistake, a therapeutic mistake, and I'm afraid it was a serious one."

I KNOW. YOU SAID THAT ALREADY. IT'S NOT GOING TO MATTER, MARV, BECAUSE WE'LL BOTH BE DEAD OF OLD AGE BY THE TIME YOU GET IT OUT. WE'LL BE FOSSILIZED. I didn't say that either. I just said, "So tell me."

"It's about Ginger." Oh, Jesus Christ. Maybe I didn't want Marv to tell me after all. I started to open my mouth, then shut it again. Marv had called me. I hadn't called him. He wanted something from me —maybe I should find out what it was before I chickened out.

"Okay," I finally got out.

Marv sighed and shifted in his seat. "She developed a very intense transference. I'm sure you're well aware of what that is like." He glanced up at me, and I immediately felt guilty for sending her to him. What a thing to do to a friend. "But at first it seemed quite stable, and nothing beyond what you had described.

"She would drive by my house frequently at night and on the weekends, just for reassurance I still existed, that sort of thing. She'd drive by in the middle of the night, too, when she couldn't sleep.

"I didn't know any of this at the time. I didn't find it out until . . . well, let me get to the point."

The shouting in my head had stopped once Marv finally got going, but for the life of me I couldn't see where this was headed.

"Unfortunately, she drove by early on the night you came to see me, and she saw your car. Of course, she knew your car because she used to do the same thing to you."

"She did what to me? She drove by my house?" Marv nodded. I automatically put my hand to my mouth. I didn't know that. I knew she drove by the office, and I knew she called my answering machine for reassurance, but I never thought about her going to my house.

"But how did she know where it was?" Surely, he was wrong.

"She followed you. She really is quite clever. The first night she followed you part of the way, then turned off. The next night she was waiting where she turned off previously, and she followed you for another section and turned off. Eventually, she got all the way to your house, and I doubt anyone would have realized they were being followed.

"I didn't know any of this, Michael," he said, anticipating my reaction. "Not until right before I called. I pressed immediately until she told me the whole story. I would have told you —the information release she signed when you transferred her is still valid—but I didn't know. In any case, when she saw your car at my house, she immediately got jealous —I'm not sure of whom, since she's attached to both of us —and she came back in the middle of the night to reassure herself that your car wasn't still there. But of course, it was."

"Oh ..." It was pretty obvious what conclusion Ginger would have drawn.

"Then the next day she saw you in my office. If you remember, you were seeing a client for me. Of course, no one told Ginger anything about why I wasn't there —her appointment was much later that day, and I was back by then."

"Predictably, Ginger decided that we were having an affair. She took the office business as proof. You could go into my office when I wasn't there, and she couldn't. You saw a client in my office, but you wouldn't see her. She saw both of us as leaving her out. I'm afraid what happened fits quite well with the analytic model of the Oedipal complex: She felt totally abandoned."

For once I didn't roll my eyes. Whatever you called it, I could well believe that Ginger felt abandoned if she thought Marv and I were having an affair.

"So what happened?"

"She decompensated."

"How bad?"

"Quite badly, I'm afraid. She became self-mutilating. She cut her vagina to punish herself for being so worthless and unlovable."

And to punish Marv, I thought, and me.

"She was really in a very difficult state. And that's where I made the mistake."

"Like what?" I said softly. I still didn't get it. What had Marv done that was so bad?

"She was decompensating on the basis of something that didn't exist. That was the irony. We weren't having an affair, so I broke my rule on nondisclosure. I told her we weren't."

He fell silent. What he'd done wasn't wise. It was never wise to share personal information with a client. It changed the relationship, and it turned things into more of a social exchange. But I could see why Marv did it. And on the surface, it didn't seem so terrible.

But then I got it. I knew how things had gone wrong.

"What did you tell her?" I said evenly. He would never have been able to stop at just telling her we weren't having an affair. Ginger would have insisted on knowing why I was at his house all night if we weren't.

"I didn't tell her anything about your personal life," he said quickly. This was good, because if he had put the knowledge of Jordan and what she meant to me in Ginger's hands, it would have driven a stake into the heart of my friendship with Marv.

"So what then?" I said. "What did you tell her?"

Marv took a deep breath. "I couldn't lie to a client. I really couldn't. It would have totally destroyed the relationship. And I couldn't tell her the whole truth. Worse, once I had told her something, I felt as though I couldn't leave it dangling. So I told her about Willy."

"Say again?"

"I told her you had a dangerous client who had just been released from prison and that you were quite concerned about it. I told her you had some concern for your safety and that's why you were staying at my house that night."

"Oh, my God, Marv. I can't believe you did that. What'd she say?"

"It's not what she said," Marv replied. "It's what she did that's the issue. With hindsight," he said miserably, "it was quite predictable. I'm afraid I gave her a perfect excuse for stalking you. She's been 'taking care' of you ever since."

"Jesus Christ," I said. "Jesus Christ." Ginger was small —no more than five-two and small-boned.

"It was a grievous error, Michael. I am truly sorry. "

"Boy, was it." We both fell silent while I tried to put the pieces together. The world was starting to make sense again, but I didn't like the picture I was seeing.

"Have you seen anything of her?" Marv asked. "Have you noticed anything?"

"Yes and no," I said. "I noticed something, but I had no clue it was Ginger. I almost killed her. She was on the ridge behind my house in the middle of the night —at least I'm betting it was her—and I was lying no more than fifty feet away with a gun in my hands. I thought she was Willy." Marv blinked rapidly and swallowed.

"And a few days before that she almost killed me," I said. She spooked a rabbit—again, I'm assuming it was her. Is she still wearing those spike heels even when she's got on jeans?" Marv nodded. "Then she was the one. She spooked a rabbit, who spooked my horse, and I ended up wearing the jump." Marv's face started losing color.

"We have to get her out of this, Marv. And I mean instantly. Willy's closing in, and I have to know what's him and what's not. I can't hesitate worrying about whether it's Ginger. Besides, if Willy's hanging around, he knows she's there too, and he could easily leave her as a present on my front doorstep."

Marv looked like he would faint. "He'd do it," I said firmly. "He'd make a joke about it. That's his style. He'd say something about doing me a favor or too many cooks spoiling the broth. But she's right between the two of us, and that is definitely the wrong place to be."

"Willy's 'closing in,'" he said weakly.

"Forget it," I said. "I'm getting good help on it."

Marv looked relieved. Bob Dylan was a genius: "All I suggest is a man hears what he wants to hear." Willy's way was amazingly easy. Just tell people what they want to hear, and they buy it every time.

"So," I went on, "what do we do about Ginger? If we tell her she's in danger, she'll never leave. She'll stay to 'protect' me. You can't tell her you lied to her. It'll ruin her faith in therapists, and I doubt she would live right now without one. You can't even keep her as a client. You've screwed up the relationship by giving her info she shouldn't have. Besides, she's crossing boundaries big time."

I was trying to be gentle, but it wasn't coming out that way. I was getting more pissed the more I thought about it. If he wanted to self-disclose, why did he disclose about me? Why not tell her something about himself?

The analytic people would have a field day with this. So Marv wasn't pissed at me for transferring Ginger? Ha! He'd given her right back. Or maybe he was so pissed at her, he was unconsciously trying to get her killed. Or maybe both. When people didn't know they were angry, they did terrible things.

That was the one advantage of being angry all the time and knowing it. I kept an eye on my anger like some sort of boa constrictor in the garden. I tried to keep it focused where it mattered—on people like Willy. But poor Marv had thought he was a gentle soul. And he was —as much as anybody is.

Whatever his motivation for nearly getting both Ginger and me killed, I didn't want to touch it. Marv was a very smart man, and he'd probably go back into analysis over this. He'd be obsessing over his navel for decades, which, God knows, was punishment enough.

We talked till noon. We tried this out and that out and the other out. We canceled a series of clients and appointments, and we refused to take phone calls. The secretaries began to worry about what horrendous crisis was in the air now.

I told him nothing more about Willy. I felt sorry for Marv for what he'd done, but I couldn't change the fact that I no longer trusted him. Under pressure, he'd betrayed me, and that fact stuck in my mind —and I'd bet in his, too. Sure, it could have been worse—he could have told her about Jordan. But somehow that seemed like poor consolation. How close had he come to telling Ginger about her? Would he leave her out the next time? I knew the answer rationally, but I no longer knew it in my heart.

Finally, we realized the answer to Ginger was in front of us all the time. It only took four hours for us to see it. At least, maybe it was the answer. It was a good shot, the only one we could think of. But it relied on putting unbelievable pressure on Ginger, and Marv didn't like it. He wanted to cry "mea culpa" and apologize to her on his knees. I told him he could wallow on his own time. Taking responsibility for his stupidity would be the worst thing he could do to Ginger right now.

In the end, he agreed. He couldn't think of another option.

He called Ginger to set up a meeting, and I went off to find Toby and cash in my chit. Great. The only time Toby had owed me in a decade, and it was going to last less than a week. I had no doubts Toby would go for it. He'd love not to owe me, and besides, Toby's blind spot was his narcissism just as Marv's was his anger. If I fed that enough, he'd buy just about anything.

As for my motivation . . . Sure, this one fed the boa a little bit, but at least I knew it.