Wildwood Road (16 page)

“Did you say something, Gabrielle?”

“Um, no.”

“Well,
um,
it sure sounded like you did. Do you have a problem this morning?”

Gabrielle's eyes narrowed. She bit her lower lip, and it was clear that whatever she wanted to say, she was holding it back. “You were in such a hurry I didn't have a chance to tell you that Ron wants to see you. He asked me to tell you when you came in.”

For a long moment Jillian only stared at her, trying to decide how far she wanted to go with it. She had always gotten along with Gabrielle, but this morning the girl's tone had really pissed her off.

She nodded. “Fine.”

Phones were ringing as she strode through the office of Dawes, Gray & Winter. People hurried past her, arms loaded with contracts and briefs, documents to copy, or trays of coffee, bagels, and muffins headed for one meeting or another. Voices clashed in the air like some mercenary room in the Tower of Babel, talking about stocks and money and litigation. Her own office was off to the western side of the building, but she kept on straight through the beehive center of activity and then into a corridor that was painted in gentle colors, its walls adorned with tasteful art. There were potted plants here, and each office door had an engraved nameplate.

Ron Balfour was a partner in the firm, a silver-haired snake-oil salesman whose nose was red from drink and whose face matched that color anytime he became the slightest bit annoyed. He had a reputation as an excellent attorney, particularly in the courtroom. When he grew impassioned speaking to a judge or jury, spittle flew from his mouth. But he won. Jillian had no idea how many times Ron had successfully defended airlines against the claims of the families of crash victims, or chemical companies from class-action suits in communities with high cancer rates.

He was a good lawyer.

The glass wall of Ron's office was opaque, but the door was partially open. Jillian rapped once and then ducked her head in. Ron was just hanging up the phone and gestured for her to join him.

“Jillian. Good morning. Come on in.”

She stood just inside the door, arms crossed over her chest, managing to clutch her massive cup of coffee even in that position. If she let the guy stare at her tits he'd never get a sentence out that she could understand.

“What can I do for you, Ron?”

He hesitated, glancing at the door as though he wanted to ask her to close it. Jillian looked down at him impatiently, and he nodded as though she had prodded him.

“I've had a complaint from a client about one of your paralegals.”

One of
your
paralegals. She didn't fail to notice the emphasis. They were his employees, but when there was some shit to sling, suddenly they belonged to her.

“Which client? Which paralegal?”

“Spence Rosen from RoyalTech called. Apparently this girl was very rude to him in a meeting the other day. I get the impression that he questioned the accuracy of certain documents and she snapped at him.”

Jillian rolled her eyes and sighed. “And which
girl
would that be, Ron?”

The attorney's face darkened, flushing a deep red to match his nose. He sat back in his chair and studied her. “I don't think I like your tone, Jillian.”

“And I'd say that in the hands of the right attorney, the pejorative use of ‘girl,' as if your female employees are teenage chambermaids, would constitute the creation of an uncomfortable work environment related to gender issues, Ron,” she said.

He opened his mouth to form some retort, then shut it again. His face flushed so deeply red it looked as though it were covered with fresh blood. With that color against his silver hair, he looked ridiculous, like some first-time Florida tourist with a lobster sunburn.

“It was a poor word choice,” he said slowly, dangerously. “But I hope you aren't suggesting that I—”

Jillian shifted her weight from one foot to the other, arms still crossed, and tilted her head to glare at him. “Ron. Please. It's Monday and I've got a lot to do today. If I'm being enough of a bitch that you can't stand it, fire me. If I'm doing my job well, chalk it up to PMS and just tell me who to ream.”

He blinked in shock, suddenly the picture of propriety. “Jesus, Jillian.”

“Ron,” she said tiredly.

“Her name is Vanessa something.”

“Castille,” Jillian said with a sigh. “Vanessa Castille. Third strike. She's out.”

“That's a little harsh, don't you—”

“Brad Klein made it clear to me that if Vanessa screwed up again he wanted her fired. Are you telling me not to fire her?”

He contemplated that a moment and then shook his head. “No. Go on ahead. Just make sure we have a paper trail on her performance.”

“Fine. Write me a memo about the complaint you got on her.”

Without waiting for any further reply she turned and left his office. The day was looking brighter by the moment. As she strode through the bustle again she sipped at her coffee. It scalded her lips, but she didn't mind. Her mood could not have been any fouler.

When she reached her own little corner of the Dawes, Gray & Winter fortress, she slid into the chair behind her desk and scowled at the red light blinking on her phone. Reluctantly she put her coffee down, punched in the code for her voice mail, and listened to the messages. Her sister had called, but Jillian was in no mood for Hannah right now. There were half a dozen work-related messages that she scribbled down onto a pad to deal with after she had finished her coffee. There was a message from Michael that she deleted without even listening to. Bob Ryan had left her two messages, and there was one from a reporter at the
Eagle Tribune,
one of the larger local papers, who wanted to discuss the following year's election with her. She had not even made her candidacy official, and Ryan or one of his cronies had already leaked it. What was she supposed to say to a reporter? Hell, what was she supposed to say to Ryan, today?

Jillian let her head drop, her forehead banging the desk.
Shit. What the fuck is wrong with me?
She didn't feel like herself. The way she was behaving this morning wasn't giving her any pleasure . . . or maybe a very little bit. But if she couldn't play nice with Ron Balfour she was going to be headed out the door right after Vanessa Castille.

You stupid ass,
she thought.
If you call Bob Ryan like this, your future in politics is over before it starts.
She stared at the message she had scribbled on her pad. No. Tomorrow she would call him, apologize and say she had been too busy to talk to him. Tomorrow, things would be better. Maybe Michael would even have gotten his act together and gone back to work.

Shaking her head, Jillian picked up the phone and punched in Vanessa Castille's extension. The paralegal's voice mail picked up.

“Vanessa, it's Jillian. I need to see you in my office. Now.”

Her eyes hurt and itched. Her head ached. Jillian set the phone down and leaned back in her chair, massaging the bridge of her nose. She felt like she had acid on her tongue, or some kind of snake's venom, and she just wanted to spit it at people. It was the strangest feeling. There was a kind of echo in the back of her mind telling her that she ought to feel guilty, but instead she was exhilarated.

She reached for her coffee. The phone rang and she spilled some of it onto the notepad, blurring the words.

“Mother
fucker
!” she snarled.

Cursing again, she snatched up the phone. “Hello?”

“Jilly? What's wrong?”

Hannah. Jillian sighed. Of all the people she wanted to talk to this morning, her sister would have been pretty close to last on the list.

“Jilly?”

“Hannah, didn't you leave me a message?”

Her sister hesitated. “I . . . yeah, I did. I just wanted to tell—”

“Did I call you back?”

“No. Jillian, what's wrong with you? Did something happen? You sound like someone just killed your dog. If you had a dog.”

For a moment Jillian could only clench her teeth and squeeze her eyes closed. Then she laughed softly.

“Hannah, if I haven't called you back that means I don't have time for you right now. That's what voice mail is for. When I do have time, I'll call you back. Until then, just let me breathe, okay? I'm your sister, not your fucking boyfriend.”

All she heard on the phone was a little gasp. But she knew Hannah. Any second now her sister would start in with the hurt feelings and all of that.

Jillian hung up on her.

It wasn't half a minute before there came a knock on her door and she looked up to see Vanessa Castille standing in the doorway. The woman's expression showed plainly just how worried she was. Jillian had no patience for trying to be her friend today. She was the boss. It was time she started acting like it.

“You wanted to see me?” Vanessa began.

“Any idea why?” Jillian asked.

Vanessa shook her head, trying to mask the obvious, like someone getting pulled over for doing seventy in a thirty-five-mile-per-hour zone and acting all mystified about why the cop would bother her.

“The other day when I talked to you about the Lyons Publishing thing, I thought I made it clear to you that you needed to avoid making any other mistakes.”

Vanessa stared at her. “I didn't. I mean, I don't think I did.”

There was a hurt-little-girl thing going on with her, both in her face and her voice, and it made Jillian want to slap her. Maybe Ron Balfour had used the right word for Vanessa after all.

“One of the senior partners had a complaint from a client about your behavior. You were rude, apparently.”

Vanessa tried for solemn indignation. She stood a bit straighter. “I think I deserve at least to know what I've been accused of and who's doing the accusing.”

Jillian nodded. “You're probably right. But I don't have the stamina for dealing with bullshit like this right now, so you're going to have to get the details from Human Resources during your exit interview.”

“My . . .” Vanessa began to hyperventilate a little and she took a step back, shaking her head. “Jillian, come on. Don't . . . my exit interview? We're friends. What are you doing?”

It was funny. Jillian couldn't help it. She laughed.

“Friends? We get along, Vanessa, but it's not like we're chatting on the phone every night about the size of our husbands' dicks. You're an employee of this firm. I'm your boss. Now, seriously, I don't have the time for this and my head hurts like a bitch. Pack up your crap and get out of here by lunchtime. Call H.R. to make an appointment for the interview. We'll mail your last check.”

T
HE AFTERNOON SUNLIGHT REACHED LONG
fingers across the floor of the Danskys’ living room. Dust motes danced in those shafts of autumn light and Michael watched them, entranced. He lay upon his side on the sofa, legs tucked up under him in near-fetal repose. The television had not been on today. He had not read a single page from a book. The morning newspaper still lay at the end of the driveway. The postman had come, but the mail remained in its box.

In the silence of the house he could hear the hum of the refrigerator and the tick of the clock from the kitchen. He could hear trucks passing by on the main road, not far away. All weekend he had moved through the house as though he himself had become the ghost, haunting it. He had spent today on the sofa, not moving except to piss and to eat a bowl of Cheerios when his stomach growled. He barely tasted them. The house seemed to breathe around him. From time to time he had the distinct impression that he was not alone. The pressure in the room changed and he felt certain that if he looked behind him, he would see the girl there.

Scooter.

Or, worse, the ugly women in their shapeless coats. Misshapen women whose long fingers had been like daggers as they slipped into Jillian's skin, sinking into her flesh without leaving a wound. . . .

“Oh, Jesus,” Michael whispered, breaking the silence.

But there was no one in the house to hear him. The clock ticked. The refrigerator hummed. The dust motes danced. And there he lay, frozen. Outside the living room window he saw figures moving along the street and he held his breath, held down a scream that pushed against the backs of his lips.

Voices reached him, muffled by the windows. Laughter.

It was just kids, fresh off the school bus, walking home. Even now he could hear the rumble of the bus as it trundled along to its next stop. A girl passed by, perhaps twelve years old. She had black hair and a bright red jacket, and she swung her backpack as she went past the window. Two boys followed her, bumping each other and laughing. All on their way home.

Michael felt trapped in his own living room. He wished he could call to them, ask them to come in and watch television in his house, just for company. Just for life and laughter. But he could never have done such a thing. What would their parents think?

And what might happen to them here?
he wondered. Would the ugly women appear again, to touch them with fingers that passed through flesh like water?

He swallowed and his throat burned. A shiver went through him, and abruptly he felt tears burn at the corners of his eyes as he recalled the fingers that had been thrust into his throat, the words that had been forced out of his mouth in a voice that was not his own. His stomach churned at the utter alienness of that touch. It had tainted him.

But that was nothing. Not in comparison to whatever they had done to Jilly.

Jilly. Sweetie, what
did
they do?

He was afraid to go outside. The house was no safer, yet he felt safer here. In the living room. Downstairs. Michael had not dared go upstairs all weekend, and had slept on the sofa in front of the television every night. Nothing could have made him go into his bedroom. Scooter might come back. Or the ugly women.

The two were connected. He knew that. They had warned him.
You can not help her. She is ours. If you continue to search, you will not like what you find.

Michael bit his lower lip and squeezed his eyes closed, swallowing the grief he felt. Whatever they had done to Jilly had been a warning. It was all about the girl, somehow. And none of it was in his head. None of it. Fucking psychiatrists couldn't help him. Not an army of them.