Or She Dies Read online

  She leaned forward, her voice low. ‘What if it’s me and Don?’

  As the page loaded, I sat with that one, the weight of it low in my stomach. That was all I needed — my wife’s one-night mess sent right to my desktop. A high-water mark of invasiveness. The thought brought to mind a snatch of my conversation with Punch — how emails, even once they’re deleted, leave an evidence trail in the hard drive.

  With dread, I stared at the loading page. It hadn’t occurred to me that once I opened that email, I couldn’t control what it carried with it. Into my computer.

  Before I could do anything, there it was, a single email staring out at us from my inbox. The sender line, blank. Subject line, blank. For now, the unopened email still resided safely on the server, not yet called up on my computer. I moved the cursor all the way to the side of the screen, in case it decided to double-click the email by itself.

  They’d visited this computer already, printed out those JPEGs of our floor plans. I checked the history function of Explorer to see which websites had been recently visited. It listed none I didn’t recognize.

  ‘Wait,’ Ariana asked. ‘Why aren’t you opening the email?’

  I mimed someone listening, then gestured a question: Where’s the jammer? In answer she tugged the fake pack of Marlboros from her pocket. She never let the thing out of her sight.

  ‘I don’t want to do this here,’ I said. ‘From my computer.’

  ‘Look,’ Ari said, still back a step, ‘if it is me and Don, we might as well face it together.’

  ‘No, I mean I shouldn’t be retrieving data from them on my computer. Even if I erase it, the record of it stays in the hard drive somewhere. Or they could use an email to piggyback in some virus that lets them read my computer remotely.’

  ‘Wouldn’t they have just installed that when they were here?’

  I was up now, whistling down the stairs, Ariana at my back. I said, ‘Jerry checked our computers for spyware, remember?’

  Tugging on my shoes, I hurried for the garage. ‘Wait,’ she said. She pointed at my feet.

  I looked down. I was wearing my bugged Nikes. Cursing, I kicked them off and stepped into my loafers. Given my white socks, not my best look, but I didn’t want my stalkers to know I was heading to Kinko’s.

  Patrick Davis.

  That’s all the email said, though my name had been turned into a hyperlink. Buried in a rented corner cubicle, I looked over my shoulder. The Kinko’s guy was busy servicing a loud woman in louder clothing, and the other customers Xeroxed and stapled at the bank of copiers toward the front of the store.

  Raising the hem of my shirt, I wiped the sweat from my forehead. Gritted my teeth. And clicked on my name.

  A website popped up. As I took in the internet address — a lengthy series of numbers, far too many to commit to memory — bold letters appeared: THIS WEB SITE WILL ERASE UPON COMPLETION OF ONE VIEWING. They faded into the black background, a ghostly effect.

  Digital photos flashed one after another, like a PowerPoint presentation.

  Ariana’s greenhouse framed against our trees at night.

  Then, inside, the shot bathed in a green, otherworldly glow.

  The row of pots on the middle shelf of the east-facing wall. Her lavender mariposas, unpicked and unworn these past months.

  A familiar hand in a familiar latex glove, lifting the end pot and saucer. Beneath them, on the soft wood, a purple jewel case.

  That disc hadn’t been there three nights earlier when Ariana and I had searched the greenhouse.

  I was leaning forward at the monitor, my hands tensed like talons. The discs, the devices, the phone call — none of it had acclimated me to watching someone pry around in our possessions, in our lives. If anything, my reaction was worse, trauma compounding trauma, sandpaper on raw skin.

  The photo disappeared, replaced by a written address: 2132 Aminta St., Van Nuys, CA 91406. Desperately, I looked for a pen and some scrap paper — none in my cubicle. I flew around the corner to the next desk, knocking over the plastic supply caddy and grabbing a pencil and Post-it from the spill. When I got back to my monitor, the typed address had been replaced by a Google Maps screen, the location marked smack in the shittiest part of Van Nuys. I managed to jot down the address, grabbing it from the location bubble, before that screen also blipped off.

  The next featured four numbers, evenly spaced: 4 7 8 3.

  I wrote those down as well, an instant before they were replaced by a shot of a dingy apartment door. Flaking paint, cracking seams, and two rusty numbers nailed where a peephole should be: 11. One of the nails had come loose, so the second 1 had sagged to a tilt.

  And then, like a breath of icy air down my rigid spine, a message appeared, as bold as its type: GO ALONE.

  The browser window closed on its own, quitting out of the program. When I reopened it, it had no records stored of recent websites visited.

  There was no evidence, no artifact that said this was anything more than an evil dream. All I had were an address and four mystery numbers written in my own hand.

  Chapter 25

  ‘That’s it?’ Ariana asked.

  On the couch next to me, she turned over the purple DVD case as if it had a Blockbuster write-up on the back. The cover still sported a spot of moisture from the plant saucer.

  ‘We must’ve missed something,’ I said, already fussing over the remote. We stared again at the plasma, remounted somewhat crookedly on our wall.

  The picture flickered back on. Grainy black and white — probably a security camera. A basement, expansive enough that it wasn’t residential. A dangling bulb putting out a throw of weak light, a set of stairs catching the shadows. A generator, a water heater, several unlabeled cardboard boxes, and a spread of blank concrete floor. On the second-to-bottom stair, what appeared to be a mound of cigarettes. A bank of fuse boxes, just in view on the far wall. Superimposed on the screen, the date and a running time stamp: 11/03/05, 14:06:31 and counting.

  The footage ended.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Ariana said. ‘Is there some coded meaning that we’re missing?’

  We watched the DVD through again. And again.

  She bounced off the couch, exasperated. ‘How the hell are we supposed to figure out what that is?’

  She watched with dread as I plucked the Post-it from the coffee table. That Van Nuys address.

  I ejected the DVD, nestled it in its case, and slid it into my back pocket. Sitting on the floor in the foyer, I laced up my Nikes. I needed to wear them sometimes to not give away that I’d discovered the tracking device embedded in the heel. Might as well do it now while I was following orders.

  Ariana stopped me at the door to the garage. ‘Maybe you just shouldn’t. You don’t know what’s behind that door, Patrick.’ Her voice trembled with intensity. ‘You don’t know how to handle this kind of thing. Are you sure you want to go poking a stick into this?’

  ‘Look, I’m not Jason Bourne, but I know a little.’

  ‘You know what they say about a little knowledge.’ She started to cross her arms but thought better of it. ‘They could just be hoping that you’re dumb enough to show up. What can they do if you don’t?’

  ‘You want to find out?’

  She didn’t answer.

  I stepped down into the garage. ‘We’ve got to figure out what this is. And who’s doing it to us.’

  ‘Think, Patrick. Right now? This moment? Nothing’s really happened to us yet. Our house is safe. You could just come back in here with me.’

  At the side of my car, I paused to look at her. For an instant I thought about going back inside, making a cup of tea, and grading student scripts. What could they do if they built a maze and no rat showed up? Was there more risk in scuttling along through their twists and turns or staying still and waiting for the walls to close in?

  The keys poked the inside of my fist. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I have to know.’

  She watched me from the doorway as I b
acked out. She was still standing there when the garage door shuddered down, wiping her from view.

  Down in the bowl of the Valley, dusk seemed heavier, thickened with smog. Car fumes and sickly-sweet barbecue fragranced the still air. Crushed Michelob cans and fast-food wrappers lined the gutter. The apartment building was your typical Van Nuys disaster — crumbling stucco, deteriorating concrete walkways, a bent security gate. Air conditioners hung from windows, dripping condensation. The VACANCY sign flapping from the rain gutter was hardly enticing.

  I’d been standing across the street for several minutes, steeling myself for whatever waited behind the door to Apartment 11 and waiting for the acid at the back of my throat to dissipate. What was I stalling for? If they were monitoring the tracking device in my Nikes, they already knew I’d shown up to the party.

  The hum of an engine sent me, finally, into motion. A patrol car creeping up the block, each cop looking out his respective window, scanning the sidewalks and buildings. Turning away, I shouldered against a parked van and pretended to talk into my cell phone to bury my face. The sedan neared, tires crackling over asphalt, static-laced bursts from the scanner. I caught a glimpse of mirrored sunglasses, a muscular forearm resting on the open windowsill, and then the car coasted past aloofly. I exhaled the held breath burning my lungs. I felt like I was doing something illicit. Was I?

  I jogged across the street and confronted the security gate. A waffled metal door, housed in a frame that blocked the entrance to the courtyard. To my left, a speaker unit with a keypad. The instructions for dialing up to the apartments were soggy from rainwater, illegible beneath the cracked casing. A directory, under intact cover, paired owner names with apartments, but 11 and a number of others were blank. The yellowed form looked as if it hadn’t been updated in years. Shrugging, I tried to call up to number 11, but a disconnected signal bleated from the speaker.

  I nodded to myself.

  Then I dug the Post-it from my pocket and smoothed it next to the keypad. I punched in those four numbers I’d written beneath the address — 4783 - and thumbed the pound symbol. A grating buzz released the gate, and with a stab of exhilaration I walked through.

  Maybe not Enemy of the State. Maybe I was living out The Game.

  Apartment 11 was at the back of the courtyard on the second floor. My unease mounted as I ascended the stairs. Ariana was right — this was foolhardy. I could be strolling into my own murder.

  The floating walkway serviced four apartments, each in worse shape than the last. I reached number 11. Those rusting numerals, loosely nailed to the door. No peephole. With its cracks and curling paint, the ancient door looked even worse than in the picture. The knob hung loose. A new dead bolt, the sole upgrade, had been installed high on the door, compensating for the old-fashioned keyhole assembly.

  I took out the DVD in its purple case, regarded it, tapped it against my thigh. Sucked in a breath, blew it out hard. Then I pushed the doorbell. Broken. Given the condition of the complex, I wasn’t surprised. I pressed my ear to the wood, dry paint poking the side of my face. More nothing.

  I raised my hand but couldn’t bring myself to knock. I don’t know what stopped me. Dread, maybe. Or perhaps an early warning system, some heightened awareness my cells were registering even if my mind was not. I rethought my decision to wear the GPS Nikes. Did they rule out a retreat? I lowered my fist. Released a silent breath. Was that a muffled creak I heard from inside or merely the floor groaning beneath my own weight? Slowly, cautiously, I crouched to look through the old-fashioned assembly.

  Filling the keyhole, squirming to take in my nearing face, was an eye peering back at me.

  I yelped and leaped back as the door flew open, and then a stocky man in a tank top charged, shoving me into the railing.

  ‘Who are you?’ he yelled. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’

  He pounced again, pushing me into the floor, as if unsure what to do with me. I flung him away and we squared off, but it quickly became clear neither of us wanted to fight.

  His breathing was ragged, more agitated than angry. At five foot nine, he was a few inches shorter than me, but thicker. Massy arms bulged from his worn undershirt. His curly hair, mussed high and paired with a receding hairline, added a comedic note to his otherwise tough-guy appearance.

  He pointed to the purple jewel case, lying cracked where I’d dropped it on his doorstep. ‘Why are you leaving those?’

  My mouth goldfished. ‘I . . . I’m not. Someone’s been delivering discs to my house. Surveillance footage of me. They got that DVD to me, along with your address.’

  Keeping his eyes on me, he picked up the case and flipped it open. Then he glanced down, quickly, at the disc. ‘These are the kind of DVDs you use, too?’

  ‘No. Mine are different . . .’ It took me a moment to register the ‘too.’ I said slowly, ‘They send you footage, recorded onto your own discs.’

  ‘Yes. Through my mail slot. Under my windshield wiper. In my microwave.’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then swiped his thumb twice across the inside of his wrist, his movements quick, jittery. ‘Little movies of me walking to the park. Shopping for groceries. That kind of shit.’

  ‘Did they call you? On a cell phone?’

  ‘No. Never talked to anyone. But my service got shut off — bills. And I don’t have a landline.’

  ‘Do you have the DVDs?’

  The thumb moved across his wrist again, a nervous tic. ‘No. I threw them out. Why would I keep them?’

  ‘How long have they been doing it?’

  ‘Two months.’

  ‘Two months? Christ, it started five days ago for me, and I’m already . . .’ Dread overtook me, and I paused to breathe.

  ‘Why me?’ He tapped his chest with a fist. ‘Why film me? Filling up my fucking truck with gas?’

  ‘They got me taking a leak. Have you talked to the cops?’

  ‘I don’t like cops. Besides, what are they gonna say?’

  ‘How were you contacted?’ I asked.

  ‘I wasn’t. Just the discs showing up. I don’t know why . . .’

  ‘Why they’re doing this to us.’

  His expression shifted. We were comrades all of a sudden, patients with the same affliction. ‘Why they chose us,’ he said.

  I thought of that two-word directive at the end of the email. GO ALONE, not COME ALONE. A mission, not a summons. We’d been put in touch to figure something out. Our gazes moved in concert to the DVD in his hands.

  He rushed inside the apartment, me at his heels. The dense reek of mold overwhelmed me two steps in, less a smell than an impression on my pores. I blinked into the drawn-curtain dimness to see him fumbling the disc into a player beneath a hefty TV. Dirty clothes and grocery bags were strewn across the patchy carpet, as well as a few discs in purple cases marked with TV-show names. No chairs, no couches, no table by the run of counter that passed for a kitchenette. The only items that couldn’t be swept up were a twin mattress thrown in the corner, topped with a twisted fuss of sheets, and the TV denting a metal trunk.

  He shoved himself up and took a few steps back, standing shoulder to shoulder with me, facing the screen, his knee jack-hammering.

  The picture came up. Basement, stairs, concrete floor.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘It’s—’

  He let out a creaking gasp. He fell to his knees. Crawling forward, he paused the image and put his face right up against the screen, scrutinizing something in the bottom-right corner. Then he sat back on his heels and swayed a little. It wasn’t until a gut-wrenching moan filled the room that I realized he was crying. He lowered his face to the dank carpet and sobbed. I stood a few feet behind him, mystified, completely at a loss.

  He rocked and cried some more.

  ‘Are you . . .?’ I asked. ‘Can I . . .?’

  Pulling himself to his feet, he fell into me, squeezing me hard. A tinge of soured sweat. ‘Thank you, thank you, God bless you.’

  I raised
an arm awkwardly from my side as if to pat his back, but my hand just hovered there. ‘I don’t know what I did. I don’t know what that is.’

  ‘Please,’ he said, stepping away. He looked around, as if only now realizing he had nowhere for me to sit. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t remember the last time I had someone . . .’ He seemed disoriented.

  ‘It’s fine.’ I sat on the floor.

  He followed suit. His hands moved in circular gestures, but he couldn’t manage to speak. A square of yellow light from the window fell across him, filtered through thick, dusty curtains. A water stain in the far corner darkened the carpet, climbed the wall.

  ‘I was a custodian,’ he finally said. ‘At a high school outside Pittsburgh. The water heater gave out, and we were tight, you know, budget cuts.’ His thumb skimmed across the inside of his wrist again, as if smoothing the skin. ‘A guy on the school board was in on some low-income housing deal, they were tearing down a complex, whatever. So he got a big water heater from there.’ He gestured at the screen, the water heater. ‘They delivered it for me to install. An older unit. I said I didn’t like the looks of it. They told me it wasn’t a beauty pageant, that it had been tested and met whatever qualifications. So I put it in. The thing is . . . the thing is, they’d prepped it for delivery. Drained it, I mean, and wired the pressure-relief valve so the leftover water wouldn’t drip out during transport.’ He fell silent.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘I drank back then. Not anymore. But I may have had a few nips that morning. The morning I installed it, I mean. Just to get going. Third of November.’

  I glanced over at the date stamp on the screen: 11/03/05. My skin, tingling with anticipation.

  ‘Through that wall’s a basement room. Shop class.’ He pointed, his hand shaking, and there on the inside of his wrist was a thin white ridge of scar tissue. His other hand lay in his lap, exposing a matching razor-blade remembrance. ‘When the wall blew apart, one kid got killed. Another got her face mostly burned off. That she lived . . . well, in some ways that’s even worse.’ Again he thumbed the line of one of the scars, rocking a little. ‘During the investigation someone found the flask in my locker. There were liability issues, you know. And they said I forgot to remove the wire, so the pressure-relief valve couldn’t open. Steam built up.’ His voice thickened. ‘They never found any part of the wire in the whaddayacallit.’