Fear itself: a novel Read online

  Linda was halfway to Pender’s when her cell phone began chirping. She fished it out of her purse without taking her eyes off the road.

  “Abruzzi.”

  “It’s Pender.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Little misunderstanding—we’re all on the same page now.”

  “What happened to Dorie Bell?”

  “All we know for sure is that she’s gone. The concern is, if it is our man that’s got her, his cycle has shortened from one victim every two months to two victims in one week. What we need to do—what you need to do—is see if you can get hold of somebody at the PWSPD Association, get them to fax you a copy of the membership roster, which at this point is beginning to look like a list of potential victims, then find out who their webmaster is, see if you can get a warning posted on the site.”

  “I’ll get on it first thing tomorrow morning,” said Linda.

  “Now would be better. I’ll give you Thom Davies’s number. He’s with the CJIS over in Clarksburg—he ought to be able to help you.”

  Linda parked behind Pender’s Barracuda, which was shrouded beneath a form-fitting tarpaulin, left her suitcase by the front door, and followed the grassy flagstone path around back.

  “Up the wooden mountain,” she told herself dubiously, eyeing not only the rickety steps leading up to the porch, but the haphazard maze of timbers, struts, and cross braces that supported the railed platform itself. She shuddered, thinking back to the party. At one point, late in the evening, there must have been two dozen of them out there singing oldies—it was a wonder the whole thing hadn’t come down.

  Fortunately, the steps were also railed and the railings close enough together to use as parallel bars. If they can take Pender’s weight, they can take mine, Linda told herself. She felt like planting a flag when she got to the top.

  Linda remembered the Buddha from the party. It was Tibetan, the first scowling Buddha she’d ever seen, and couldn’t have resembled Pender more closely if he’d sat for the sculptor. “It was the only thing my ex didn’t get after the divorce,” he’d explained. “And that was only because she didn’t want it.”

  By the time she’d retrieved the key, descended the wooden mountain, walked back around the house, and dragged her suitcase inside, she was ready to collapse onto the orange sofa.

  But Pender was right—now would be better. Back at the Academy, Linda had been taught that serial killers were characteristically divided into two types, organized and disorganized offenders. The phobia killer, as she’d come to think of him (they’d have to come up with a more colorful name when they took the investigation public—unless, of course, they had a suspect by then), was obviously organized, and one particularly bothersome characteristic of organized serial killers, the instructor from the Behavioral Sciences Unit had explained to the trainees, was that they got better at it as they went along. They selected their victims more carefully, planned their attacks more meticulously, and, especially alarming from the law-enforcement point of view, they tended to learn from their mistakes.

  But the fact that the phobia killer was organized didn’t mean his personality wasn’t subject to deterioration, and the evidence that his homicidal cycle was shortening could be taken as an indication of a downward spiral. More active meant crazier; crazier meant more active—literally a vicious cycle.

  So she compromised—she took her phone out of her purse, dialed the number Pender had given her, and then collapsed onto the sofa by the living room fireplace.

  “Davies here.” British accent.

  “Mr. Davies, this is Linda Abruzzi. I believe we met at Ed Pender’s retirement party. He suggested I—”

  “Sorry, Thom’s gone home for the evening. This is a recording, actually. Leave a message at the beep, he’ll get back to you in the morning. Beep.”

  “Please, it’s a matter of—”

  “If you say ‘life and death,’ I shall positively hurl.”

  “I was going to say extreme urgency. But as a matter of fact…”

  “Linda, darling, the night I got home from E. L. Pender’s retirement party, I gathered my little family round the hearth. ‘From now on,’ I told them, ‘Daddy will be spending his evenings and weekends at home. He’ll be able to help you with your homework, attend your dance recitals and your Little League games—he’ll even have time to learn all your names.’ My dear wife wept for joy, Linda—she literally wept for joy.”

  “So what are you doing in the office, this time of night?”

  “With six children, it’s the only place I can get any fucking peace and quiet.”

  “Excellent. First rate. Here’s what we’re looking for…”

  11

  By the fifth or sixth time Dorie awoke that day—or evening, or night—the swelling had gone down enough to enable her to open her eyes. Not that it made any difference—you can’t get blacker than black. It was also slightly easier to breathe, but otherwise nothing had changed, except in degree—she was thirstier than ever, and needed to pee even more desperately. If she hadn’t been hog-tied, she might have been tempted to solve both problems at once by sipping her own urine—Dorie knew a famous photographer down in Big Sur who claimed to drink a glassful every morning—but as it was, even that unpleasant expedient was denied her.

  Dorie had read or seen enough hostage and POW stories to know what she had to do to survive. Keep alert, stay oriented, maintain a positive attitude. Yeah, sure. Ha, ha, and ha. But difficult as she was finding it to keep awake, much less alert, or to stay oriented in total darkness and virtual silence, the real challenge was to avoid giving in to despair.

  You can lie here feeling sorry for yourself, waiting to die, she told herself, or you can use every waking minute and every ounce of energy figuring out how to get out of this…predicament was the second word that came to mind; the first had been nightmare. But since for the moment words were the only thing Dorie had any degree of control over, she chose the less charged one. Predicament was a good word, the kind of word you could use to stave off panic. Because predicaments, after all, were things you figured your way out of, she told herself, closing her eyes again. All you could do with a nightmare was wake up from it.

  Or not.

  Warm Water, No Pain

  1

  “Ed, you up?” Sid rapped on Pender’s door, then let himself in. “Come on, wake up and smell the coffee.”

  “Eat the shit and die.” Pender didn’t bother opening his eyes—he had no intention of getting out of bed, then or ever. It was the worst kind of hangover, the kind that comes, not from having been too drunk, but from having been unable to get drunk enough, no matter how hard you tried. And Pender, despondent over Dorie, had tried—he’d tried his heart out, and a lobe or two of his liver, but he couldn’t get her out of his mind. That laugh, that hug, those cornflower blue eyes—even that zigzag nose.

  Nor was there enough Jim Beam in the world to help him forget their last conversation. We’ll get him, says the famous G-man. Don’t worry about a thing, says the famous G-man—be another two months before he kills again. You sure called that one, famous G-man. Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity? Fumbling Bumbling Idiot is more like it. Probably forced the killer’s hand just by showing up.

  “Let’s move it, Sparky.” Sid crossed the room, parted the curtains, opened the jalousies. “Plane leaves in an hour.”

  That got Pender’s attention. “I thought we said we were going to stick around for a few days, try and make ourselves useful.”

  “No, you said we were going to stick around and make ourselves useful. I said we were flying to San Francisco, as scheduled, changing planes, as scheduled, and that as soon as we got home I was going to recommend a good therapist to help you work through the grieving and the denial.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, grieving?” Pender, who’d fallen asleep in his underwear, sat up reluctantly, belched swamp gas. “I hardly knew her—she was an interview.”

  “That
’s not what I was referring to—although it is interesting that that’s what came up for you.”

  “Don’t play the shrink with me, Dolitz.”

  “I’m telling you this as your friend, Ed.” Sid smoothed the crumpled coverlet with his neat little hand and sat down on the foot of the bed. “You’re retired. The purpose of this trip—in addition to using up some frequent flyer miles before they expired—was to put a period—no, a big, fat exclamation mark—at the end of your career. To make it easier for you to accept the fact that you are no longer an officer of the law, and that catching every serial killer that comes down the pike is no longer your responsibility. Which is just as well, frankly, because you are obviously not up to the job.”

  “Now you’re just trying to piss me off.” Pender swung his legs over the side of the bed, sat there for a moment with his shoulders slumped and his heavy head hanging. When he realized that his nausea was not going to subside, and that the next belch was likely to contain more than swamp gas, he made a desperate dash for the bathroom, where he knelt to assume the position known as driving the porcelain bus.

  “You said as much yourself, last night,” Sid called after him. “In Jim Beam-o, veritas. Ten years ago—hell, five years ago—would you have just left her alone like that, somebody who fits the victim profile for an active serial killer? At the very least you’d have contacted the locals, let them know what was going on so they could keep an eye on her. Instead, you acted like a lovestruck teenager. ‘Sid, whaddaya think, should I ask her out? I think I’m gonna ask her out, Sid. Sid, should I ask her out?’”

  Pender, chalk-faced, reappeared in the bathroom doorway. Beard stubble, bags under his eyes, strap undershirt, pendulous gut, rumpled boxers, one sock. “You think I don’t know I fucked up, Sid? You think I don’t know it’s my fault she’s probably dead now? If she’s lucky? And now I’m supposed to pack it up and go home? Oops, mea culpa, so sorry, so long.”

  “Precisely. You’ve already accomplished everything you came out here to do. Let the pros handle it from here.”

  “But—”

  “Ed, you can’t be half a cop and half a civilian. People get themselves killed that way—themselves and others.”

  Pender couldn’t think of an answer. He turned and went back into the bathroom to brush his teeth.

  “You look like shit,” he told the old, fat, bald guy in the mirror.

  “Didn’t you used to be a famous G-man or something?”

  “Used to be,” said the o.f.b.g. “I’m retired now.”

  2

  “Simon?”

  Simon awoke, stiff and sore from a night in the uncomfortable burnt-orange side chair, and looked up at the clock on the wall. Quarter to six. He pushed himself up from the chair, stretched, crossed the room to Missy’s bedside, stroked the broad forehead tenderly, patted the back of her swollen wrist. She was badly sunburned, except for the elongated bluish white circles around her eyes, where her sunglasses had protected her.

  “How you feeling, sis?”

  “Thirsty.”

  Simon glanced around. Every hospital room he’d ever seen had a pitcher of ice water on the bedside table. Not this one, though. What’s the matter with these people? he thought angrily, snatching up the call button and mashing it repeatedly with his thumb like a frustrated Jeopardy contestant. A thousand bucks a day and they can’t afford a glass of water?

  “Yes?” A few minutes later the elderly night nurse popped her head through the doorway.

  “My sister’s thirsty—could we get some ice water in here?”

  “Sorry, no can do.”

  As the old bat brushed by him to check Missy’s vitals and plump her pillow—all the little as-long-as-I’m-here-anyway nursing attentions—Simon caught a whiff of stale sweat. It didn’t seem right, somehow—nurses weren’t supposed to smell. He rose and pushed his chair back. “What do you mean, ‘no can do’?”

  “Fluid retention. Doctor has her on a diuretic—the orders are no liquids by mouth until we get the edema down.”

  Simon grabbed her by the arm, just above the elbow. She glared up at him; he glared back until he saw a flicker of fear, then released her. “Look here, I won’t have my sister suffering.”

  “I’ll…I’ll bring some ice chips for her to suck on and some glycerine for her lips.”

  “Would you?” said Simon, as pleasantly as an alcoholic who’s just had a much-needed nip. “We’d really appreciate it.” He turned back to Missy. “Ice chippos coming right upski.”

  “Simon, I want to go home.”

  “I’m going to be talking to Dr. Yo later this morning. Let’s see what she has to say, first.” The nurse returned; Simon took the carafe from her, held a sliver to Missy’s sunburned lips.

  Missy didn’t have the strength to throw a tantrum—pitching a royal, Simon called it—but there were other approaches; when it came to getting her way, Missy’s IQ was in the genius range. Much as she wanted that ice, she turned her head away. “Home.”

  “Honey, your poor lips, they’re all cracked and—”

  “Home.”

  “I’ll talk to Dr. Yo as soon as—”

  “Home.”

  Home. It took a few hours to work out the details, sign the waivers Dr. Yo required before she would discharge her patient, arrange for round-the-clock private nursing, then rush home to be there before the Home-Med techs arrived to set up the hospital bed in the living room (no stairs for Missy—Dr. Yo had been quite insistent on that point). None of it came cheap, but it was worth every penny—by noon, Missy and her day-shift nurse were playing Candy Land in the living room, and Simon, at long last, was free to visit the basement. By his reckoning, close to twenty-four hours had passed since Dorie had broken her nose. She ought to be ready for a game by now, Simon told himself. He certainly was.

  3

  Linda Abruzzi was a city girl, born and raised. Several times during the night she had awakened with the sense that something was terribly wrong; eventually she figured out that it was the quiet that was bothering her. It seemed unnatural, somehow—it wasn’t until the birds began singing in the gray faux-dawn light that she was able to get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep.

  Unfortunately, the metallic burr of her windup Baby Ben alarm clock was among the noises that failed to interrupt Linda’s sleep, so she ended up racing through a truncated version of her morning routine, skipping her PT exercises and chasing her vitamins and supplements with instant coffee instead of a smoothie. Luckily, it wasn’t one of her Betaseron mornings (self-administered subcutaneous injection of .25 mg every other day), so she was spared that painful and time-consuming task.

  She made it to the office on time. Pool handed her an old-fashioned pink while-you-were-out slip. It was the first such slip Linda had ever seen with every blank filled in—date, time, caller, reason for call, action requested, message taker’s initials—even though according to the time entered, the call, from Thom Davies, at the Criminal Justice Information System, had come in only two or three minutes ago.

  “Great,” said Linda. Having struck out in her own attempts to locate someone from the PWSPD Association by phone, she was anxious to see what Thom had come up with. “I’ll call him right back.”

  “I’ll get him for you.”

  “No, that’s okay; I’ll call him myself.”

  Fat chance—Davies was on the line by the time Linda reached her desk. “Thank you, Cynthia,” Linda called.

  “No problem,” was the reply from the anteroom. “But please, call me Pool.” Then, before Linda had a chance to examine her feelings to see how badly they were bruised: “All my friends do.”

  Linda felt absurdly better. “Thank you, Pool. Hi, Thom—whaddaya got?”

  “Nuttin’—and plenty of it. Are you quite sure you haven’t hallucinated this entire PWSPD Association business?”

  “Sure I’m sure—I was logged on to their web site just the other day. Phobia-dot-com.”

  “Try it now—I�
��ll wait.”

  Linda logged on. “I got a No URL.”

  “Try a search engine—any search engine.”

  She tried Yahoo, then Google. “No hits either way—not even cached pages.”

  “Precisely. And I have access to some databases you’ve never heard of—and if you had, I’d have to kill you—that could tell me who your date was at the Junior Prom.”

  “Tony Guglielmino. No wonder I struck out with four-one-one.”

  “Whoever did this is a real wizard. So what we need now is a wizard of our own. The best one I know of is Ben Wing, with the Nerd Squad in San Jose. I left a message for him to call me when he gets in. That’ll probably be around noon, our time—if you’d like, we can make it a three-way.”

  “Yes, please, a thr—I mean, a conference call would be great.”

  “Oh, you’re no fun,” said Davies.

  “You’d be surprised,” said Linda.

  4

  “Here’s to the hair of the dog.” Pender raised his recently refilled glass.

  “Ed, the fucking dog is bald by now.” Two o’clock in the afternoon, and by Sid’s count it was Pender’s fourth drink of the day—one Jim Beam on the rocks at the airport bar in Monterey, a Bloody Mary on the connecting flight to San Francisco, and now, after receiving the call from Linda about the disappearing PWSPD Association, another Jim Beam at the airport bar in SFO.

  “Don’t nag me, man—I’m feeling very vulnerable.”

  “I know.”

  “I was being facetious.”

  “The hell you were.” Sid reached across the too-high, too-small round pedestal table, the kind you find only in airport bars, to give Pender’s beret a sharp sideways tug. “There, much better.”

  “What was that all about?”