They're Watching (2010) Page 15

  With frustration, I dropped the phone into my lap. The rapping on the door intensified.

  The view pushed in tight on the Honda. Closer. When I realized what it was zooming in on, a chill spread through my insides.

  The trunk lock.

  A wave of light-headedness, static specking my vision.

  Another set of messages appeared and faded. Forgetting to breathe, I read them numbly.

  6PM. NO SOONER. NO LATER.

  GO ALONE.

  TELL NO ONE.

  FOLLOW ALL INSTRUCTIONS.

  OR SHE DIES.

  The screen went blank. The browser quit of its own volition. Sagging back in the chair, I stared vacantly at the sad little office. Out in the hall, high heels clicked angrily away, and then only my ragged breathing remained to interrupt the silence.

  Chapter 28

  "I know some of you are starting to feel impatient. I will get to your scripts this week."

  "That's what you said last week," someone called out from the back of the lecture hall.

  I riffled my pad, staring at my notes. Aside from the three sentences I'd jotted down this morning, the page was empty. I kept picturing those ghost letters, rising and fading against the black screen: FOLLOW ALL INSTRUCTIONS. OR SHE DIES.

  Did I know the woman on the couch? Or was she merely a stranger I was supposed to help, like Doug Beeman? Was she locked in the trunk of that Honda? Alive? And if so, if they wanted me to help her, why did I have to wait until six o'clock? Dread had returned, blacker and more certain than before, wiping out any foolish excitement that might have tinged my encounter with Beeman. Their runaway plot had veered across the line, finally, into life-or-death terrain.

  The clock in the back of the lecture hall showed 4:17. Class let out in thirteen minutes--I'd have just enough time to race home, grab the key and my Red Sox hat, and get back to that alley. Though dozens of countermeasures ran through my head, I couldn't seriously consider them. My choices would determine whether that woman survived.

  One of the students cleared her throat. Loudly.

  "Okay," I said, regrouping. "So dialogue . . . dialogue should be succinct and . . . uh, compelling. . . ." I was just considering how poorly I was exemplifying this principle when I scanned the class and caught sight of Diondre in the back. I detected a hint of disappointment in his face. I forced my head into the lecture again, trying to hold it together, and had just started to get my focus when I heard the classroom door open and close.

  Sally stood to the side, her back to the wall, her holstered sidearm poking conspicuously from the bottom of her rumpled coat. I did a double take, but she offered only an amiable smile. I'd lost the cadence of my thoughts again. The mostly blank page offered no help. I checked the clock. An hour and thirty-five minutes to showtime.

  "You know what?" I said to the class. "Why don't we call it early today?"

  I grabbed my notes and started for the door. As I approached, Sally took in my faded salmon button-up. "Nice shirt," she said. "They make it for men?"

  Valentine lingered beyond the door. I couldn't wait for the last of the students to shuffle out, so I pulled him and Sally aside in the hall. "What's wrong?"

  "Somewhere we can talk?" she asked.

  "I don't have my office right now. Maybe the faculty lounge."

  "Coupla teachers," Valentine said. Something hummed in his shirt pocket, and he pulled out a Palm Treo and silenced it.

  "You went in there?" I glanced around nervously. Dr. Peterson was passing through the intersecting hall at that moment, of course, discussing something with a student. "It really looks bad for me to be questioned by cops at work right now."

  "We're not questioning you," Sally said. "Just wanted to check in. And here we thought you'd be flattered by all this attention."

  Peterson didn't slow down or stop talking, but her eyes tracked us until she passed out of view. My watch read 4:28. I needed the key before I could get to whatever--or whoever--was locked in the trunk of that Honda. If I didn't get moving, soon, I wouldn't make it there by 6:00.

  My shirt felt damp. I resisted the urge to run my sleeve across my forehead. "Okay," I said. "Thank you. Thank you for checking in."

  Sally said, "We didn't make a scene in the faculty room. Though I must say, one of your colleagues was rather solicitous."

  "Julianne."

  "Yes. Attractive woman."

  Valentine sucked his teeth. "She's straight, Richards."

  "Thanks for pointing that out. I won't abscond with her to Vermont now." Sally hitched her belt, rattling the gear. "When you comment that Jessica Biel is hot, do I point out that she doesn't go for aging black guys with jelly-doughnut guts?"

  Valentine scowled. "I have a jelly-doughnut gut?"

  "Wait five years." She took in his expression of strained amusement. "That's right. And there's more where that came from."

  I snuck another peek at my watch, and when I looked up, Sally was studying me with those flat eyes. "Late for something?"

  "No." I felt like vomiting. "No."

  "Yeah," Valentine said. "We got it the first time."

  "Went to your house this morning," Sally said. "All the curtains are drawn. Your wife barely opened the door enough to poke her head through. Like there's something in there she didn't want us to see. Is there something in there you don't want us to see?"

  Only torn-up walls, peeled-back carpet, dismantled outlets--the kind of mess a paranoid schizophrenic with a toolbox might make if left unattended. "No," I said. "We're just a little sensitive to being watched right now. You can hardly blame her. Why were you at the house?"

  "Your neighbor called."

  "Don Miller?"

  "The very one. He said you were acting weird."

  "That's a news flash?"

  "A lot of banging from your house. The closed blinds. And maybe you shoved something down into the sewer a couple nights ago."

  "Like a body?" I said.

  She waited patiently as I did my best to feign amusement, then said, "I came by to make sure I didn't mislead you in our last conversation. 'Look around' means look around. It doesn't mean go Falcon and the Snowman and get your ass shot off."

  My half grin felt frozen on my face. TELL NO ONE, they'd warned, OR SHE DIES. But for a moment I almost caved. Spilled about the e-mail and the key and the Honda's trunk. Wouldn't the police have a better chance at saving that woman than I would? All I had to do was open my mouth and make the right words. But before I could, a cell phone bleated out the Barney theme song.

  Sally sighed, her considerable weight settling. "The kid likes it. One in an avalanche of humiliating parental concessions." She stepped away to take the call.

  Valentine pouched his lips, looked down the hall with unfocused eyes. He took a step closer, like he shouldn't be telling me something but wanted to anyway. "Listen, man. One thing I learned in my time on the force is, shit leads to more shit. I can't tell you how many guys we've put away for taking one wrong step at a time." He smoothed his mustache, and in his brown eyes I saw the weariness of experience, the wisdom he'd rather not have accrued.

  Sally doubled back briskly. "We got a 211 in Westwood. We gotta move." She turned her focus to me. "If you're into something, we can help, now. If you keep us out, when things go south, we won't be able to help. Because by then you'll be part of the problem. Now: Is there anything you want to tell us?"

  My mouth had gone dry. I took a breath. I said, "No."

  "Let's go." Sally jerked her head at Valentine, and they hurried up the hall. She paused to look back at me. "Be careful," she said, "wherever you're rushing off to."

  Chapter 29

  Through the strobe flicker of passing vehicles, I could make out the Honda in the alley across the street. I'd rushed home to retrieve the key and my Red Sox hat, and made it back with two minutes to spare. The whole ride I talked myself into and out of detouring to a police station, but the image of that woman sitting on her couch kept my foot on the gas and my
hands steady on the wheel. She was no more than a hazy silhouette in a photo that I'd barely glimpsed, but the thought of her vanishing, of feeling terror or pain because of a gamble I took, was unbearable.

  Now that I was here, confronting that locked trunk, my convictions seemed less clear. Removing the paper from my pocket, I unfolded it and read my scrawled handwriting. I received an anonymous e-mail telling me to come to this car, or a woman would die. The key to this car was hidden in a fake rock in my front yard. I don't know what's in the trunk. I don't know where this will lead. If something bad happens, please contact Detective Sally Richards of the West L.A. station.

  Of course, if I did get caught in some transgression, any idiot would still think I was guilty and that I'd just written the note for insurance. But it was better than nothing.

  Two minutes left. My spine felt stuck to the seat. The digital clock--one of the few things on the dashboard I hadn't smashed--stared back at me unwaveringly. The final minute seemed to last forever, and yet I felt I had no time left at all. They'd made me responsible. If she died, it would be as though I'd murdered her myself. But was it worth potentially risking my life for a woman I didn't even know?

  FOLLOW ALL INSTRUCTIONS. OR SHE DIES.

  The clock ticked to the hour.

  I got out, my breath echoing in my hollow chest. I jogged across the street, paused at the mouth of the alley to collect myself. But there wouldn't be time for that.

  I reached the Civic. Relatively clean, specked with dirt, moderate wear on the tires--it was ordinary in every way. Except it had no license plates. I pressed my ear to the trunk but could hear nothing inside.

  There was no one deeper in the alley or at my back, closing in on me. Just the whir of passing traffic, oblivious people on their oblivious way. I fought the key into the lock. The pop of the release vibrated up my arm. I took a deep breath, then let go, stepping back quickly as the trunk yawned open.

  A duffel bag. My duffel bag, the same one I'd kicked into the sewer. It was stuffed full, blocky imprints shoving out its sides.

  I leaned over, hands on my knees, and finally exhaled. The zipper came reluctantly, and after a nerve-grinding pause I threw it open.

  Dumbfounded, I stared down, breathing the rich scent of money. Stack after stack of ten-dollar bills. And lying on top of them a map with a route traced in familiar red marker.

  In person, $27,242 seems like a lot more than it is. When it's composed of ten-dollar bills banded in packs of fifty, it seems like half a million. Pulled over in my car in the far reaches of a nearby grocery-store parking lot, duffel in my lap, I'd counted. The bundles kept coming and coming, uniform save the one made up of disparate bills. If the movies weren't lying, tens were untraceable, or at least harder to trace than hundreds or twenties. The ramifications of that were almost as troubling as the rest of it.

  The Honda had proven as inscrutable as the altered voice on the phone. No registration or anything else in the glove box, nothing hidden under the floor mats--even the skinny Vehicle Identification Number plate had been unscrewed from the dash.

  I couldn't stop staring at the map. The red line started at the freeway entrance nearest the alley, snaked east along the 10 for a good hundred and fifty miles, and finally dead-ended in Indio, a broke desert town east of Palm Springs. A small square of paper with an address--produced, no doubt, by my printer--was taped beside the terminus. Beneath it was typed 9:30 p.m. If I didn't hit traffic, I'd get there by then. That was the point--just enough time to react.

  A truck throttled by in the parking lot, and I quickly zipped the bag back up. For a moment I sat with my hands on the steering wheel. Then I called Ariana from my crappy prepaid phone. The matching one I'd gotten her went straight to automated voice mail, so I dialed her office line. It was likely monitored, but I had no other way to get hold of her.

  "I'm not going to be home," I said carefully. "Until late."

  "Oh?" she said. I could hear the whine of the lathe in the background. Someone shouted something at her, and she answered tersely, "Gimme a sec here." Then back to me: "What's this about?"

  Had she forgotten that we could speak openly only on the prepaid phones?

  I said, "I just . . . have to take care of some stuff."

  "Just when we're getting on track, it's back to this? Another double feature after work? Anything to avoid being home?"

  Was she acting right now because we weren't on a secure line? And if so, how could I signal that there actually was a problem?

  "It's not like that," I said lamely.

  "Have a nice night, Patrick." She hung up. Hard.

  I stared at the phone, unsure what to do next.

  A few seconds later, it vibrated in my hand, and I clicked on. I could tell from the scratchy connection that she'd called back from the Batphone. "Hi, babe," she said.

  I exhaled with relief, reminding myself that I should never underestimate my wife's acuity.

  "What's up?" she asked.

  I told her.

  "Jesus," she said. "This could be anything. Ransom money. A laundering operation. A drug deal. For all you know, you could be delivering payment to a hit man for your own murder."

  "I need to be driving"--I checked the clock--"five minutes ago. There's no time."

  Someone shouted in the background, and then I heard her footsteps and it got a little quieter. "What are you gonna do?"

  I lowered the visor, looked at that picture of us from the college formal. The color in our smooth cheeks. All the time in the world in front of us. Nothing to worry about but morning classes and whether we had enough money for import beer. "If something happened to that woman because I didn't go, I don't think I could live with myself."

  "I know," she said quietly. Her voice wavered, only a beat, but I caught it. The screech of machinery filled the pause. "Look, I . . ."

  I reached up to the photograph, touched her smiling face. "I know," I said. "Me, too."

  Halfway there, on a stretch of highway, I almost ran out of gas. On occasion I still forgot that the damn fuel gauge was broken on full, but the odometer caught my eye, telling me the tank was due, and I eked it out to the next exit. My mouth had cottoned up, so I ran into the mart to buy a pack of gum. Outside again, pumping gas, I stared at my reflection in the side mirror. It stared back skeptically, figuring me for a fool.

  The housing tracts in Indio felt like Legoland--all the same pieces configured differently. Five or six house designs, alternating minutely in color or size, the streets and cul-de-sacs laid down along the same few templates. I got lost, and then lost from where I was lost, driving through the oppressive repetition, concern rising to panic once the clock passed 9:15. I prayed that my Nikes with the embedded tracking device were alerting them that I was almost there.

  Finally, through a miracle, I reached the proper housing loop, prefabs thrown around a dirt circle of road. At the end, angled off by itself in a manner to suggest privacy or loneliness, was the house from the photo.

  I parked a good ways up the road and climbed out, the duffel bag straining at my shoulder, BoSox cap sitting protectively low over my eyes. It was 9:28, and my breath was coming hard. I'd forgotten how damn cold the desert got in winter. Cold enough to freeze the sweat across your back.

  Crunching over dead leaves, I approached. I couldn't see the interior through the drawn blinds, but a bluish flicker from the TV played along the seams. Despite the time, the other houses were as still as midnight, their windows black. An early-to-bed community of workers getting in their sleep before the early desert sun.

  I didn't have time to detour to peer in the window or inspect the area. Whatever was waiting for me in there--a bound woman, a crew of cigar-chomping kidnappers, a DVD holding another mystifying piece of the puzzle--I would meet it. Before I could lose my nerve, I stepped up on the two wooden stairs, pulled back the screen door, and knocked softly.

  Rustling inside. The shuffle of footsteps. The door creaked open.

  The wom
an. I recognized her from the heap of curly dark hair, shot through with gray. She was foreign. I wasn't sure how I knew, but something in her features and manner spoke of Eastern Europe. Her eyelids were pouched, flecked with skin tags, and rimmed red with exhaustion or crying. She seemed to personify a type--the doleful eyes, the homely features, the nose crooked just so. An inch or two over five feet. Her irises were striking, crystal blue and nearly translucent. She looked to be sixty, but I guessed she was younger and just worn down.

  She said, "You're here," in a thick accent I couldn't place.

  "You're okay," I stammered.

  We looked at each other. I swung the duffel down off my shoulder, held it by my side. The small living room behind her seemed to be empty. She said, "Come in."

  I stepped into the house.

  "Please," she said. "Shoes off." Her accent turned "off" into "uff."

  I complied, setting my Nikes on a hand towel laid to the side of the door. The humble place had been maintained with a lot of pride. A wicker bookshelf held dustless porcelain cats and snow globes from various American cities. The counters in the little kitchen area gleamed. Through an open door to a tiny bathroom, I saw a candle flickering in a wall sconce. Even the couch looked brand new. Oddly, a plate holding three or four banana peels sat on a side table, the bottom ones brown.

  She gestured, and I sat on the couch. After setting a bowl of cashews and a dish of tangerines on the coffee table in front of me, she took up on an armchair, displacing her knitting. We stared at each other awkwardly.

  "I receive e-mail," she said. "I was told man would come with Red Sock hat. That I must see him." For some reason she was speaking in a hushed voice, which I inadvertently mimicked.

  "Did you get any DVDs?"

  "DVD?" She frowned. "Like movie? No. I don't understand. Why do you come?"

  I glanced around, bracing myself for a bomb, a violent son, a SWAT-team entry. On the microwave, three more bunches of bananas. To the right of the cashews, a school photo of a young girl, maybe six, with a bright, forced smile. Frizzy brown hair, both front teeth missing, dressed in a smock checked like an Italian tablecloth. One pigtail had slid lower than the other, and a purple spot stained the front of the smock; whoever had dressed her up so carefully for picture day would not be pleased. Something in that grin--the eagerness to participate, to please--made her seem so damn vulnerable. Stuck to the frame was a Chiquita sticker--what was with the bananas? I forced my eyes back to the woman. She wore a plain gold wedding band, but somehow I knew that her husband had died. Her sadness was palpable, as was her kindness, conveyed in the small smile she'd shown me when she'd set down the bowl of nuts. I would have done anything to avoid upsetting her.