What Comes Next (31 page)

“Number Four, please pay attention.”

“Oh, the bear went over the mountain, the bear went over the mountain, the bear went over—”

“Number Four, stop singing now, or I will hurt you.”

It was the woman speaking in a monotone. Jennifer had no doubt that the threat was sincere.

She ceased.

“Good,” the woman said.

Jennifer wanted to smile.
Small rebellions,
she told herself.
Do what they want but.

“Pay attention,” the woman said.

I know where you are,
Jennifer thought. She didn’t know why this was important to her, but she knew it was.

The few seconds that she had peeked beneath her blindfold had done much for her sense of strength. It had orientated her in the room. She knew about the video camera pointed in her direction. She had taken in the stark white walls, the gray color of the floor. She had quickly measured the size of her space and, most critically, she had seen her clothes stacked near the doorway. They were all folded neatly, placed next to her backpack, as if they had been laundered and were waiting for her. It was not the same as actually being dressed, but the mere possibility of climbing back into her jeans and a sweatshirt had given her a sense of hope.

The camera had given her plenty to think about.

She could sense its unerring eye, watching her.

Jennifer understood it meant there was no privacy.

At first, it had reddened her face, and she felt a wave of violation coming over her. But, nearly as swiftly, she had understood that whoever was watching wasn’t really watching
her
as much as they were watching
a prisoner.
She was still anonymous. She was still hidden. Maybe her body had been exposed but not Jennifer. It was as if there was a distinction between who she was and what she did. The two were separate. Actions were being carried out by some Jennifer look-alike called Number 4, while the
real
Jennifer clutched her bear and sang songs and tried to figure out what she was trapped inside. She knew she had to work hard to protect
Real Jennifer
while making
Fake Jennifer
seem real to the man and the woman. Her jailers.

And there was one other thing she managed to understand about the camera. It meant that she was needed. Whatever drama was being played out she was the main actor.

She did not know how long this necessity would keep her alive. But it meant she had some time and she was determined to use it.

“Number Four, I am going to place a chair at the end of the bed. You are to make your way to it and sit down.”

Jennifer swung her feet over the bed. She stood. Then she stretched, lifting one leg up, then the other, flexing her muscles. She rose up on her tiptoes and lowered herself several times in quick succession. Then she twisted one arm behind her back, stretching her torso. She repeated this movement with the other arm. She could feel her muscles contracting, then releasing, and stiffness exiting from her bones.

“It is not exercise time, Number Four. Please do as I say without delay.”

Jennifer rolled her head, loosening her neck, then carefully walked to the foot of the bed, keeping a hand against the frame to steady herself. She reached out and felt the wooden back of a chair and maneuvered into it. She sat primly, hands folded on her lap, her knees pressed together, a little like a mischievous schoolgirl in a catechism class, afraid of the teacher nun.

She could sense the woman moving closer to her. She half turned in her direction, awaiting further orders.

The blow was unexpected and savage.

An open hand, delivered across her cheek, nearly knocking her to the floor. The shock was as painful as the blow. Behind her blindfold she could see stars and her face screamed out in pain, as if nerve ends all over her body had been subjected to an electric current. Dizziness mixed with pain in a concoction that made her head spin. She gasped for air. She knew she made some animal-like whimper noise of hurt, but she couldn’t tell whether it had echoed in the room or only inside of her head. She gripped the chair seat, trying to steady herself, knowing, although not knowing
why,
that if she fell she would be kicked and hurt even more.

She wanted to say something but no words made it past her lips, only choking sobs.

“Are we a little clearer about things now, Number Four?” the woman asked.

Jennifer nodded.

“When I give you an order, you are to comply. I believe we had made this clear to you before.”

“Yes. I was trying… I didn’t realize…”

“Stop whining.”

She stopped.

“Good. I have some questions for you. You will answer them carefully. Do not volunteer more information than is asked for. I want you to keep your head steady and looking straight forward.”

Jennifer nodded. She sensed the woman leaning forward, closer to her, and she heard a whisper that echoed a hiss. “The answer to the first question is
eighteen,”
she said.

Behind the mask, Jennifer blinked, as if surprised. She understood
that was for me only.

She could hear the crinkling sound of the woman’s outfit as she moved backward, maneuvering a small distance away. There was a pause, and Jennifer fixed herself, robot-like, back into the schoolgirl’s position and stared straight ahead, even if she was looking into the blackness of the blindfold.

“Good. Number Four, tell us how old you are.”

Jennifer hesitated then blurted out: “I’m eighteen.”

A lie, she thought, that saved her from some pain. The woman continued.

“Do you know where you are?”

“No.”

“Do you know why you’re here?”

“No.”

“Do you know what will happen to you?”

“No.”

“Do you know what day it is? Or perhaps, the date, the time, or even if it is day or night?”

She shook her head, and then stopped herself. “No,” she said. This time her voice cracked slightly as if the word
no
was expensive porcelain and would shatter at the smallest slip.

“How long have you been here, Number Four?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you frightened, Number Four?”

“Yes.”

“Are you afraid of dying, Number Four?”

“Yes.”

“You want to live?”

“Yes.”

“What will you do in order to survive?”

Jennifer hesitated. There was only one answer available.

“Anything.”

“Good.”

The woman’s voice was coming from a few feet away. Jennifer suspected that she had moved behind the camera, so that her answers went directly into the lens. She felt a small surge in confidence.
I’m being filmed.
The ability to comprehend, even if only slightly, what was happening to her helped. She felt her muscles tense.
They don’t know how strong I can be,
she told herself. Then doubt crept into her imagination.
I don’t know how strong I can be.
She wanted to cry, give in to sobs and despair. Or else fight back, but she did not know how. She was trapped between two poles, as the woman’s questions followed relentlessly.

“Stand up, Number Four.”

She did as she was told.

“Pull down your underwear.”

She could not help herself; hesitation crept into her hands. But Jennifer sensed the woman’s fist curling, getting ready to smash her again. She did as she was told. She told herself it was like going to the doctor’s office, or being in a locker room after a sweaty workout. There was no shame in her nakedness. But behind her blindfold even she knew this was a lie. She could feel the camera probing her and she was humiliated. Tears were close when the woman said, “You may return to your seat.” She grabbed at her flimsy panties and tugged them into place and sat down. It was as if something had been cut away from her. It was worse than when the man had forced her to bathe naked. This had been an inspection. A meat inspection.

“Before you came to this room, what was your greatest fear?”

She needed to think. Her mind was crowded with embarrassment.

“Greatest fear, Number Four?” The woman’s voice was insistent.

Jennifer struggled to come up with a reply.

“Spiders. I hate spiders. When I was little a spider bit me and my face swelled up and ever since then—”

“That is some
thing
you fear, Number Four. But what is your greatest fear?”

Jennifer hesitated.

“Sometimes I would get scared that I would be trapped in a room filled with spiders.”

“I can make that happen, Number Four”

Jennifer shivered involuntarily. She knew the woman could. She imagined that she had only scratched the possibilities of the woman’s cruelties. And she expected the man’s to be worse.

“But what is your greatest fear, Number Four?”

The same question hammered her. She wondered,
What was wrong with my answer?

A word or two caught in her throat and she coughed. She had another idea.

“That I would never get out of the little town I lived in and that I would be stuck there forever.”

The woman paused. Jennifer thought that maybe she’d taken the woman by surprise with her answer.

“So, Number Four, you hated your home?”

Jennifer’s head bobbed up and down as she replied.

“Yes.”

“What did you hate?”

“Everything.”

Again the woman spoke carefully. Her voice hammered at Jennifer. The steady beat of the questions felt like blows raining down on her heart.

“And so you wanted to escape, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Do you still want to escape, Number Four?”

Jennifer felt sobs crushing her chest. She wasn’t sure whether the woman meant escape from her home or escape from her cell. This indecision hurt.

“I just want to live,” she said. Her voice quavered.

The woman paused before continuing. The questions were relentless.

“What have you loved in your life, Number Four?”

She was flooded with childhood memories. She could see her dead father standing in the midst of her blindfold darkness, except now he was alive and wearing a familiar grin that lit up his face and beckoned for her to come to him. She could remember parties and playgrounds. She could recall moments that were ordinary, picnics and a family trip to Fenway Park for a summer afternoons ball game and hot dogs. Once during a school excursion to a nearby farm she had crawled into an enclosure where newborn puppies were being nursed by their mother, and she had marveled at the tiny energy and softness of life. She could see a picture of herself and her mother, whom she truly believed she no longer had a reason to love, swimming in a river in a state park, where a little waterfall cascaded cold water over their heads and the two of them had battled the goose bumps because it felt so wonderful. All these images accelerated around her, like being caught in a fast action movie inside the darkness. She breathed in sharply. All these thoughts belonged to her and she knew she had to protect them.

“Nothing,” she said.

The woman laughed.

“Everyone loves something, Number Four. I repeat. What have you loved?”

Jennifer felt ideas rushing toward her. All sorts of images jumbling together. A torrent of memories. She had to fight them off, keep them hidden. She hesitated before speaking briskly.

“I had a cat… actually, I found a stray kitten. It was wet and scrawny and lost. I was allowed to keep it. I named it Socks because it had white paws. I fed it milk and it would sleep on my bed every night. For years she was my best friend.”

“What happened to Socks, Number Four?”

“When she was seven she got sick. The vet couldn’t save her. She died and I helped bury her. We dug a hole in a garden and put her into it. I cried for days afterward, and my parents offered to get me a new kitten but I didn’t want something new, I wanted the one I’d had who died.” She hesitated then briskly added, “There. That’s something I loved.”

“Touching, Number Four.”

Jennifer was about to say
you asked
but she didn’t want to be hit again. She steeled herself to hide a derisive grin but indulged in an inner sarcastic glee. The story of Socks was a complete and total lie.

No cat, you bitch. No dead cat at all. Fuck you.

“One last question, Number Four.”

Jennifer did not move. She waited.

“Are you a virgin, Number Four?”

She could feel thickness in her tongue, a sour taste on her lips. They were dry and she licked them several times. She did not know what the right answer was. The truth was
Yes
but was that a good or bad reply? She could feel fear creeping into her. The vague implication about sex was stifling.
They want to rape me,
she thought.

“Are you a virgin, Number Four?”

If she replied
No
was that some sort of invitation? If she indicated she had had sex before, was that like giving them permission? Was her naivete a good thing or a bad thing?

She hated making a decision. She didn’t know what was right.

“Yes,” she said. Her voice cracked slightly.

The woman laughed.

“You may return to the bed,” she said. Her voice was tinged with mockery.

27

At more or less the same time in different locations, Adrian and Terri were both staring at computers that belonged to the same person, but they had reached opposite conclusions.

One saw dead ends.

The other saw infinite possibilities.

What Terri discovered on the machine centered on her office desk was very much what she had expected. Some low-rent pornography—nothing that surprised her with exceptional exoticism or dark edginess—and a selection of mostly boring excursions to sports websites, medical chat rooms discussing Alzheimer’s, an offshore betting site, and a predictable number of online video games such as Full Tilt Poker and World of War. There was, in her estimation, nothing on the computer that even suggested that Mark Wolfe was reengaging in the sort of activities that had gotten him arrested. Nor was there anything that overtly indicated he might be moving up the sexual predator food chain. The computer seemed to her to contain nothing relevant to the missing Jennifer. And even if she cringed a little at the pornography she found, she guessed that it wasn’t anything different from what she would find on the home computers of half the policemen in her department.