Time Release (15 page)

From his plastic chair near the coach's office, Christensen worried again about bringing Sonny along. As productive as their recent sessions had been, conversations in his office offered a limited view. He occasionally liked to see clients in less artificial situations, which gave him a more three-dimensional understanding. Annie's weekly swimming les­son seemed a perfect chance to get Sonny out of the office, to build another level of trust. They'd probably need that in the weeks ahead. But the fact remained: The chain between Sonny Corbett and his father was a short one. How much of himself should he share with someone so close to a killer?

“Let's see those rainbows!”

Annie pushed off the submerged platform, what she called the tower, and dog-paddled furiously to the edge of the pool fifteen feet away. After three months of lessons, she'd never even attempted that distance. She hated their Saturday ritual in the Highland Park Natatorium, hated that he hadn't given in to her protests to quit. The only reason she'd agreed to stay after her regular lesson was that, in the ninety minutes since he'd introduced her to Sonny Corbett, she'd developed a devastating crush. She would do anything he asked, and her father, for all intents and purposes, had ceased to exist.

“That was great!” Sonny said. “Try it again, back to the tower.”

“Did you see me? I swam!” she shouted, asking Sonny, of course, not her father. Her tiny voice echoed off the empty building's high ceiling. The other kids and parents had left. Annie's swim teacher, Wendy, was finding reasons to hang around—picking up towels, straightening kickboards, lin­ing up the lane dividers just so. She was nineteen, pretty, with legs up to her shoulders, and she blushed crimson when Sonny shook her hand and politely asked if he could work with her student for a few minutes after the lesson. Wendy and Annie were eyeing Sonny in much the same way, although Sonny didn't seem to notice. He just bent down and slapped Annie five.

“Ten more times. Just back and forth. Don't forget: rainbow arms. And breathe!” He stood and demonstrated the Australian crawl, his head turning mechanically for breath on every second stroke. He was sweating heavily in the humid, 80-degree heat, and a dark patch dampened the T-shirt stretched tight across his back. In his dreams, Christensen had shoulders like that.

Annie dog-paddled back to the tower. No form whatso­ever, but no hesitation either.

“She'll do fine once she stops being so afraid,” Sonny said, easing into a nearby chair. He wiped his feet with a towel and pulled on his white socks and off-brand running shoes.

“You've got a real fan club going here.” Christensen nodded first to his thrashing daughter, then to Wendy, who was arranging pool chairs in a precise line along the natatorium wall. Sonny looked up but continued his shoe-tying.

“The skills will come,” he said. “Most instructors try to move too fast. Right now, she just needs to build up her confidence. They never make any progress until they let go of the edge.”

“That goes for any of us, Sonny,” he said. “Don't you think?”

No reaction. Annie was doing as she'd been told, splash­ing back and forth between the tower and the pool rim.

Wendy lightly touched Sonny's shoulder, her shyness lost to astonishment at Annie's sudden progress. “How'd you get her to do that?” She'd pulled on a baggy sweatshirt, but those legs were still bare. “She's been a total Cling-on since we started. Now she's, like, Little Miss Fearless.”

Sonny shrugged. “Kids are funny. Sometimes they just have to hear the same thing from a different person and all of a sudden they listen. All I did was ask her to do it, and she did.”

“She's got a plan, I'm sure,” Christensen said. “Machiavelli in pigtails.” Again, no one seemed to hear. Why did he feel invisible?

“Does poop float?” Annie shouted. She'd stopped at the tower and was looking toward the south end of the pool. “Gross. I think there's poop and it's coming toward me.”

Wendy confirmed the sighting and sulked off to get a net and some disinfectant chemicals.

“I'm staying on the tower,” Annie shouted.

“One of the hazards of teaching toddlers,” Sonny said. “I used to teach that age group sometimes, but only when I really needed money.”

Christensen gathered up Annie's towel, sweatsuit, and sneakers. He'd finally remembered to bring a hair dryer so she wouldn't have to cross the parking lot with a wet head, but now he wondered where to plug it in.

“Can I ask you something, Sonny?” He didn't wait for an answer. “We've been at this a few weeks now. How do you feel about it?”

Sonny finished tying his shoes, then sat back, avoiding eye contact. “Wanted to talk to you about that,” he said. “I'm not sure I'm ready to go on with all this.”

“No?” Hardly the answer Christensen had anticipated.

Sonny held out his hands and flexed them, palms down. “Started talking to you because of my hands, but now we're getting into all this other stuff. And some of it's pretty weird. I'm not sleeping. My training's way off. And nothing's changed with my hands. They still short out on me pretty regular.”

“So you're wondering, What's the point? Right?”

Sonny nodded.

“A legitimate question, I guess.”

They watched Wendy corral the turd with a long-handled net. Annie watched her, too, shivering on the tower in her frilly pink suit.

“Like the dreams. They're getting stranger. Scary some­times. Like, I woke up the other night yelling and coughing and crying about how I couldn't breathe. My roommates think I'm nuts. Wonder myself sometimes.”

Christensen untied the double knots in Annie's shoelaces, getting them ready. “And it was scary to you?”

“What do you think?” Sonny said.

“Painful?”

“You try not breathing and let me know.”

In his office, Christensen might have pushed. Not here. But he didn't want to just walk away from it. “That's all started happening since we met, hasn't it?”

Sonny nodded.

“Do you think that might be significant in some way? That talking about growing up, your family, all that, seems to trigger these disturbing dreams? We know a lot of them are just dreams. A few we've pegged as memories that just felt like dreams. But either way, I'm wondering, if we keep talking, maybe we'll find the reason your hands started going numb in the first place. That's still what we're after, right?”

Sonny flexed his hands again. “Not sure.”

“About what?”

“About going on. About talking to you. I feel like I followed you into this long tunnel. Can't see what's ahead, and didn't like what I saw on the way in. I just want to turn and run back out.”

Christensen touched Sonny's knee. “I'm still with you, though. I wouldn't just leave you there.”

“But you don't have a flashlight, either.”

Christensen laughed. “Got me there. But I think you know you can't just run back out.”

“Why not?”

“Listen to what you're saying, Sonny. Do you really think you can stop the dreams by not seeing me anymore, by not talking about it?”

They stopped while Wendy began the rescue operation. Annie was refusing to get back in the water. “Hang on to the edge of the tower,” Wendy said, hooking the platform's leg with a long aluminum rescue bar. “I'm going to drag it to the side.”

“I'd like to try,” Sonny said. “Nothing personal, but I need a break.”

Christensen was used to clients walking away from therapy when it got too painful. Chances were, Sonny would be back. But Downing wasn't going to take it well.

“Your choice, Sonny. But you call me anytime if you need to talk. And if you ever feel the need to start getting together again, don't hesitate.” Christensen opened his wallet, pulled out a business card, and scribbled on the back. “Here's my home number.”

Sonny studied the card. “No address?”

Christensen studied Sonny, wondering why he wanted to know it. Annie suddenly bounded up, soaking wet, wearing her towel like a cape. “Pooping in the pool's not okay,” she said.

“No, it's not,” he said. “It puts bad germs in the water.”

She leaned an elbow on Sonny's knee and nodded disapprovingly toward the pool. Sonny didn't seem to notice. “Probably just some kid,” she said. “Where's my treat?”

Sonny'll probably be fine, Christensen thought as he carried Annie up his front steps. He was strong and resilient. Downing was another matter. He wasn't looking forward to that call, to telling Downing his best shot at resolving the Primenyl case might have failed. But Sonny's decision made Christensen realize how much stress their relationship had added to his life. The time commitment was one thing. The constant in-the-headlights feeling was something he'd never imagined.

“Call Brenna,” Melissa said. She brushed by with her coat on, headed out the front door as he was headed in. “Mail's on the kitchen counter. I'm going out.”

He stood there, holding Annie, struggling to keep the storm door from slamming shut. “Where are you going?”

“Where does a fire go when it goes out?”

“A straight answer, please, Lissa.”

“Sarah's,” she called over her shoulder. She was moving down the sidewalk at a good clip to discourage further conversation.

“Be back for dinner, please,” he called, but she walked on.

He laid Annie on the couch and covered her with the plush goose-down comforter Molly had bought years ago in California. He was a grad student then, living off practically nothing, and they'd fought about the extravagance of it, about her refusal to compromise on quality. She only bought things that lasted, and the house was still full of her.

The kitchen was reasonably intact, although Melissa's lunch dishes were in the sink, unrinsed. He flipped absently through the pile of utility bills, credit-card solicitations, and university newsletters on the counter, then picked up a paper-wrapped package a little bigger than a paperback book. The mailing label was typed. The postmark was from the Highland Park station, about a mile away. It was lightweight but solid. A videocassette maybe?

He slid his thumb underneath the tape on the back and tore away the wrapping paper. A video. Unlabeled. Unboxed. It wasn't even in a sleeve. He checked the torn wrapping paper. No note. No return address. If it was direct-mail, it was intriguing enough to be effective. Sheer ambiguity saved it from the trash, where he always put the real-estate previews, merchandise catalogs, and other direct-mail videotapes that showed up from time to time. This one he laid on the counter while he made himself a sandwich from a leftover roasted chicken. He dumped the carcass and the rest of the pickings into two quarts of water. A couple diced onions, celery, some dried noodles and thyme, a bouillon cube or two, and voila! An all-natural eat-when-you're-ready dinner for himself and the girls, one made almost entirely without anything packaged.

Annie was stretched out like a warm cat under the com­forter. After pushing the videotape into the VCR, he moved her feet to make room to sit, set his plate on the coffee table, opened an Iron City Dark, and picked up the remote control. The Penn State football game on ESPN was a rout, with Michigan State down 24 in the fourth. He didn't care about the Ohio State game on CBS. He clicked the remote to VCR and aimed. The screen turned black.

The first scene, a crowded street, appeared suddenly in a jostled blur. Definitely not a slick promotional video. The date in the lower right corner said November 28. He boosted the volume but there was no narration, only the uneven thrum of passing traffic. The camera lurched along the crowded sidewalk. Christensen recognized a building across the street as the Pitt law library. The light meter adjusted as the camera passed beneath a dark awning. A polished oak facade came into view on the left. The front entrance of Primanti Brothers. He could almost smell the fish sand­wiches.

If it was a promotional video, somebody was ripping off the Primantis. Christensen took a bite of his sandwich and a long pull on his beer. It tasted like a carbonated Fudgsicle. He wished he could get it year-round instead of just in the fall.

The camera burst back into daylight, then zoomed. The bustle of the sidewalks filtered away, and the frame filled, ultimately, with the backs of two men walking away from the camera. As they rounded a right corner, the lower floors of the Cathedral of Learning loomed into view. They walked at a leisurely pace, talking. Puffs of vapor occasion­ally curled around their heads and trailed away. One wore a tan trenchcoat. His hair thinned at the crown, but only slightly. The other wore some sort of black-and-gold ath­letic jacket. All four hands were in jacket pockets.

Christensen swallowed another mouthful of sandwich and savored the frothy bite of the beer at the back of his throat, then checked his watch. He'd better call Brenna, he thought. He was reaching for the remote when the man in the trenchcoat turned toward the other.

Grady Downing?

He looked closer, but the man had turned his face away. The profile was gone. Christensen rewound the tape. Downing, definitely. The mustache gave it away. And all the pieces fit. The bald spot. The broad back. The trenchcoat. Why would Downing send him a videotape of himself?

No, wait. Downing obviously hadn't shot this tape. Someone else had.

The two men turn another corner, into the side parking-lot entrance of the student union. Christensen stopped, the sandwich suspended inches from his mouth, finally recog­nizing the second man as himself. The jacket had thrown him off, but now he remembered Downing pulling a Steelers jacket out of his car and offering it to him that day they'd walked around Oakland talking about the Primenyl case, the day Downing had asked him to evaluate Sonny Corbett. They were on their way back to his office in the student union, where Brenna was waiting with a sack of groceries.

The screen went blank, then sparked to life again. Christensen put his sandwich down, his appetite gone. This was creepy.

A panning shot of a street, his street. His house, shot from where? Some distance away. He did the triangulation. Probably from the corner of Kent Drive, a block away and across the street. He checked the volume. Nothing still. The camera continued its slow pan, stopping finally at Mrs. Taubman's house. A zoom. Her front yard, green. No snow. The date in the lower right corner of the frame disappeared before he thought to look at it, so he rewound. December 5. It blinked off again. Zooming again. Mrs. Taubman's house. Tighter. Her front yard, littered with day-care toys. Tighter. Her front steps. Tighter still. Someone sitting on the steps in an oversized parka, a Barbie in each mittened hand.

Annie.

A car passed across the screen, briefly blocking the view. Its engine noise faded, and the screen blanked again. The whole segment lasted maybe thirty seconds, but Christensen's heart was pounding. What until then had been confusion and vague discomfort suddenly focused: Someone was watching from the moment Downing had first approached him about the Primenyl case, and that person apparently knew where he lived.

Another scene. Sidewalks again, but indoors. A fountain. An escalator. The East Hills Mall. A group of teenagers slouched on a bench outside the Mrs. Fields cookie shop. They talked, but he couldn't make out the words. He recognized Melissa's friend Sarah first, even though her back was toward the camera. She had hair to her waist. And Melissa. She was smoking a long, thin cigarette. Another zoom. His daughter filled the screen, practicing her French inhale.

Son of a bitch.
Who's following my kids?

Black again. Or was it? Pinpoints of light crept across the screen. Was it night? The lights weren't moving, the camera was. Then it stopped. Still December 5. His backyard. In the glow of the spotlight on the rear of his house, a steady rain fell. Camera lens flecked with droplets. His garbage cans lined the front wall of the garage. His toolshed in the background. A panning shot of the house. The upstairs lights were dark, the kitchen light on.

Black again, then the shot resumed from a slightly different angle, this time focused on the garage. Whoever shot it must have been in McAllister's backyard. Christensen moved from the couch to the coffee table to be closer to the screen. The door to the garage loft was open. He looked closer. Someone in the shadows. The figure leaned out into the rain, then leaned back in. He was wearing his faded Pitt sweatshirt. He knew right away he wasn't alone. He never went into Molly's loft alone. When he finally ducked into full view and headed through the rain toward the house, Brenna was close behind, laughing, holding his hand and wearing one of his blue oxford shirts with the sleeves rolled up. The camera followed them in the back door, then went black again.

He looked around the room, feeling invaded and vulnerable. Annie stirred, then burrowed deeper beneath the comforter. His sandwich lay on the floor between the couch and the coffee table in mayo-smeared piles of bread and roast chicken. He didn't even realize he'd dropped it.

The videotape continued, crushing his illusions of secu­rity with each innocuous scene. Another yard, this one unfamiliar. Daylight. Snow. The camera panned a row of houses stretching side by side into the distance. He didn't recognize the scene; it could have been any one of a number of city neighborhoods. In the foreground, a chain-link fence backed up to an alley. The camera returned slowly until it was pointed almost straight down.

A dog, a sloe-eyed basset, stared up into the lens, tail wagging, snuffling. Slobber streamed from his lower jaw, barely visible against the snow. The camera wavered, then something fell into the frame. Something silver, or red, landed near the dog and disappeared beneath the snow, and the dog set right to the search with his short front paws.

Christensen was numb. He didn't know the relevance of the scene, but he knew something was wrong. Something was about to happen. He knew it as surely as the time he'd watched two speeding cars collide at the base of Negley Hill. Nothing he or anyone else could do until the sickening hulks of twisted metal spun to a stop. And even then, nothing could be done.

The dog delicately pulled the foil from the snow by an unfolded corner. The contents looked like hamburger, and after a cursory sniff, the dog ate it in a series of almost dainty bites. He stood licking the streamers from his chops. Ran his snout over the foil again, then snaked his tongue inside for the remaining morsels. Tail whirling like a propeller. The dog held one corner of the foil down, tore off a piece with his teeth, chewed, and swallowed. It seemed to be reconsidering this when suddenly its legs collapsed.

Lying belly down in the snow, the dog shuddered. Its neck seemed suddenly weak, like it was trying to lift its head but couldn't. Its chin was buried, plowing snow as the head moved from side to side. Its rear end rose, then collapsed again. The tail went limp.

Christensen instinctively looked away, then forced his eyes back to the screen. The dog was up, trying to walk away from the camera, making guttural sounds, almost like a cow, as it moved along the fence. It turned back, lips curled off the teeth in a half-snarl. The eyes were wide, confused, desperate. It gagged and fell again. It struggled to its feet, lurched a few more steps, fell again. This time, it didn't get up. Its body heaved, the buck and thrash digging a grisly dog-angel in the snow. Then, finally, it was still.

Black again. Christensen buried his face in hands as cold as ice. The screen was still black when he looked up. Please let it be over, he thought. But he let the videotape roll, ten, twenty, thirty seconds. He was about to shut it off when the screen filled with a still shot of hand-painted numbers on decorative tiles. Tiles Molly bought in a craft store in New Hope three years before she died. Tiles he spent an entire Saturday mounting on the wall beside the front door. Tiles that in sequence read 3545 Bryant—his address.

Then it was gone, a blip of a scene. Fast forward. Blank. Rewind. He released the button when the final scene flashed past. His address tiles blinked on again, maybe three seconds, then off. Rewind again. No sound. No movement. Just a primal-fear moment chiseled forever into his psyche by someone with a video camera standing on his front porch.

One more time. This time he noticed the date, stark and white against the dark green trim around his front door. December 19. The day before yesterday.