Tell No One (2001) Page 11

Shauna thought about it. "Yeah, probably."

  She left then. I turned and faced the screen. And I waited.

  Chapter 18

  Nothing's happening," Eric Wu said. "Beck keeps trying to sign on, but all he gets is an error message."

  Larry Gandle was about to ask a follow-up question, when he heard the elevator rev up. He checked the clock.

  Rebecca Schayes was right on time.

  Eric Wu turned away from his computer. He looked at Larry Gandle with the kind of eyes that make a man take a step back. Gandle took out his gun ' a nine-millimeter this time. Just in case. Wu frowned. He moved his bulk to the door and flipped off the light.

  They waited in the dark.

  Twenty seconds later, the elevator stopped on their floor.

  Rebecca Schayes rarely thought about Elizabeth and Beck anymore. It had, after all, been eight years. But this morning events had stirred up some long-dormant sensations. Nagging sensations.

  About the "car accident."

  After all these years, Beck had finally asked her about it. Eight years ago, Rebecca had been prepared to tell him all about it. But Beck hadn't returned her calls. As time went by ' and after an arrest had been made ' she saw no point in dredging up the past. It would only hurt Beck. And after KillRoy arrest, it seemed irrelevant.

  But the nagging sensation ' the sensation that Elizabeth's bruises from the "car accident" were somehow a precursor to her murder ' lingered, even though it made no sense. More than that, the nagging sensation taunted her, making her wonder if she, Rebecca, had insisted, really insisted, on finding out the truth about the "car accident," maybe, just maybe, she could have saved her friend.

  The lingering, however, faded away over time. At the end of the day, Elizabeth had been her friend, and no matter how close you are, you get over a friend's death. Gary Lamont had come into her life three years ago and changed everything. Yes, Rebecca Schayes, the bohemian photographer from Greenwich Village, had fallen in love with a money-grubbing Wall Street bond trader. They'd gotten married and moved into a trendy high-rise on the Upper West Side.

  Funny how life worked.

  Rebecca stepped into the freight elevator and slid the gate down. The lights were out, which was hardly unusual in this building. The elevator started heading up to her floor, the churning sound reverberating off the stone. Sometimes at night, she could hear the horses whinny, but they were silent now. The smell of hay and something probably fouler mingled in the air.

  She liked being here at night. The way the solitude blended with the city's night noises made her feel her most "artsy."

  Her mind started drifting back to the conversation she'd had last night with Gary. He wanted to move out of New York City, preferably to a spacious home on Long Island, at Sands Point, where he'd been raised. The idea of moving to the 'burbs horrified her. More than her love of the city, she knew that it would be the final betrayal of her bohemian roots. She would become what she swore she would never become: her mother and her mother's mother.

  The elevator stopped. She lifted the gate and stepped down the corridor. All the lights were off up here. She pulled back her hair and tied it into a thick ponytail. She peered at her watch. Almost nine o'clock. The building would be empty. Of human beings at least.

  Her shoes clacked against the cool cement. The truth was ' and Rebecca was having a hard time accepting it, she being a bohemian and all ' that the more she thought about it, the more she realized that yes, she wanted children, and that the city was a lousy place to raise them. Children need a backyard and swings and fresh air and...

  Rebecca Schayes was just reaching a decision ' a decision that would have no doubt thrilled her broker husband, Gary ' when she stuck her key in the door and opened her studio. She went inside and flipped the light switch.

  That was when she saw the weirdly shaped Asian man.

  For a moment or two the man simply stared at her. Rebecca stood frozen in his gaze. Then the Asian man stepped to the side, almost behind her, and blasted a fist into the small of her back.

  It was like a sledgehammer hit her kidney.

  Rebecca crumbled to her knees. The man grabbed her neck with two fingers. He squeezed a pressure point. Rebecca saw bright lights.

  With his free hand, the man dug with fingers like ice picks under her rib cage. When they reached her liver, her eyes bulged. The pain was beyond anything she'd ever imagined. She tried to scream, but only a choking grunt escaped her mouth.

  From across the room, a man's voice sliced through the haze.

  "Where is Elizabeth?" the voice asked.

  For the first time.

  But not the last.

  Chapter 19

  I stayed in front of that damn computer and started drinking pretty heavily. I tried logging on to the site a dozen different ways. I used Explorer and then I used Netscape. I cleared my cache and reloaded the pages and signed off my provider and signed back on again.

  It didn't matter. I still got the error message.

  At ten o'clock, Shauna headed back into the den. Her cheeks were glowing from drink. Mine too, I imagined. "No luck?"

  "Go home," I said.

  She nodded. "Yeah, I think I'd better."

  The limousine was there in five minutes. Shauna wobbled to the curb, fairly wasted on bourbon and Rolling Rock. Me too.

  Shauna opened the door and turned back to me. "Were you ever tempted to cheat? I mean, when you two were married."

  "No," I said.

  Shauna shook her head, disappointed. "You know nothing about how to mess up your life."

  I kissed her good-bye and went back inside. I continued to gaze at the screen as though it were something holy. Nothing changed.

  Chloe slowly approached a few minutes later. She nudged my hand with her wet nose. Through her forest of hair, our eyes met and I swear that Chloe understood what I was feeling. I'm not one of those who give human characteristics to dogs ' for one thing, I think that it might demean them ' but I do believe they have a base understanding of what their anthropological counterparts are feeling. They say that dogs can smell fear. Is it such a stretch to believe that they also smell joy or anger or sadness?

  I smiled down at Chloe and petted her head. She put a paw on my arm in a comforting gesture. "You want to go for a walk, girl?" I said.

  Chloe's reply was to bound about like a circus freak on speed. Like I told you before, it's the little things.

  The night air tingled in my lungs. I tried to concentrate on Chloe ' her frolicking step, her wagging tail ' but I was, well, crestfallen. Crestfallen. That is not a word I use very often. But I thought it fit.

  I hadn't fully bought Shauna's too-neat digital-trick hypothesis. Yes, someone could manipulate a photograph and make it part of a video. And yes, someone could have known about kiss time. And yes, someone could have even made the lips whisper "I'm sorry." And yes, my hunger probably helped make the illusion real and made me susceptible to such trickery.

  And the biggest yes: Shauna's hypothesis made a hell of a lot more sense than a return from the grave.

  But there were two things that overrode a lot of that. First off, I'm not one for flights of fancy. I'm frighteningly boring and more grounded than most. Second, the hunger could have clouded my reasoning, and digital photography could do a lot of things.

  But not those eyes...

  Her eyes. Elizabeth's eyes. There was no way, I thought, that they could be old photographs manipulated into a digital video. Those eyes belonged to my wife. Was my rational mind sure of it? No, of course not. I'm not a fool. But between what I saw and all the questions I'd raised, I had semi-dismissed Shauna's video demonstration. I had come home still believing that I was to receive a message from Elizabeth.

  Now I didn't know what to think. The booze was probably helping in that respect.

  Chloe stopped to do some prolonged sniffing. I waited under a streetlight and stared at my elongated shadow.

  Kiss time.

  Chloe barke
d at a movement in the bush. A squirrel sprinted across the street. Chloe growled and feigned a chase. The squirrel stopped and turned back toward us. Chloe barked a boy-you're-lucky-I'm-on-a-leash sound. She didn't mean it. Chloe was a pure thoroughbred wimp.

  Kiss time.

  I tilted my head the way Chloe does when she hears a strange sound. I thought again about what I had seen yesterday on my computer ' and I thought about the pains someone had gone through to keep this whole thing secret. The unsigned email telling me to click the hyperlink at "kiss time." The second email setting up a new account in my name.

  They're watching....

  Someone was working hard to keep these communications under wraps.

  Kiss time...

  If someone ' okay, if Elizabeth ' had simply wanted to give me a message, why hadn't she just called or written it in an email? Why make me jump through all these hoops?

  The answer was obvious: secrecy. Someone ' I won't say Elizabeth again ' wanted to keep it all a secret.

  And if you have a secret, it naturally follows that you have someone you want to keep it secret from. And maybe that someone is watching or searching or trying to find you. Either that or you're paranoid. Normally I'd side with paranoid but...

  They're watching....

  What did that mean exactly? Who was watching? The feds? And if the feds were behind the emails in the first place, why would they warn me that way? The feds wanted me to act.

  Kiss time...

  I froze. Chloe's head snapped in my direction.

  Oh my God, how could I have been so stupid?

  They hadn't bothered to use the duct tape.

  Rebecca Schayes lay upon the table now, whimpering like a dying dog on the side of the road. Sometimes, she uttered words, two or even three at a time, but they never formed a coherent chain. She was too far gone to cry anymore. The begging had stopped. Her eyes were still wide and uncomprehending; they saw nothing now. Her mind had shattered mid-scream fifteen minutes ago.

  Amazingly, Wu had left no marks. No marks, but she looked twenty years older.

  Rebecca Schayes had known nothing. Dr. Beck had visited her because of an old car accident that wasn't really a car accident. There were pictures too. Beck had assumed she had taken them. She hadn't.

  The creeping feeling in his stomach ' the one that had started as a mere tickle when Larry Gandle first heard about the bodies being found at the lake ' kept growing. Something had gone wrong that night. That much was certain. But now Larry Gandle feared that maybe everything had gone wrong.

  It was time to flush out the truth.

  He had checked with his surveillance man. Beck was taking his dog for a walk. Alone. In light of the evidence Wu would plant, that would be a terrible alibi. The feds would shred it for laughs.

  Larry Gandle approached the table. Rebecca Schayes looked up and made an unearthly noise, a cross between a high-pitched groan and a wounded laugh.

  He pressed the gun against her forehead. She made that sound again. He fired twice and all the world fell silent.

  I started heading back to the house, but I thought about the warning.

  They're watching.

  Why take the chance? There was a Kinko's three blocks away. They stay open twenty-four hours a day. When I reached the door, I saw why. It was midnight, and the place was packed. Lots of exhausted businesspeople carrying papers and slides and poster boards.

  I stood in a maze line formed by crushed-velvet ropes and waited my turn. It reminded me of visiting a bank in the days before ATMs. The woman in front of me sported a business suit ' at midnight ' and big enough bags under her eyes to be mistaken for a bellhop. Behind me, a man with curly hair and dark sweats whipped out a cell phone and started pressing buttons.

  "Sir?"

  Someone with a Kinko's smock pointed at Chloe.

  "You can't come in here with a dog."

  I was about to tell him I already had but thought better of it. The woman in the business suit didn't react. The curly-haired guy with the dark sweats gave me a what-are-you-gonna-do shrug. I rushed outside, tied Chloe to a parking meter, headed back inside. The curly-haired man let me have my place back in line. Manners.

  Ten minutes later, I was at the front of the line. This Kinko's clerk was young and overly exuberant. He showed me to a computer terminal and explained too slowly their per-minute pricing plan.

  I nodded through his little speech and signed on to the Web.

  Kiss time.

  That, I realized, was the key. The first email had said kiss time, not 6:15 P.M. Why? The answer was obvious. That had been code ' in case the wrong people got their hands on the email. Whoever had sent it had realized that the possibility of interception existed. Whoever had sent it had known that only I would know what kiss time meant.

  That was when it came to me.

  First off, the account name Bat Street. When Elizabeth and I were growing up, we used to ride our bikes down Morewood Street on the way to the Little League field. There was this creepy old woman who lived in a faded yellow house. She lived alone and scowled at passing kids. Every town has one of those creepy old ladies. She usually has a nickname. In our case, we'd called her: Bat Lady.

  I brought up Bigfoot again. I typed Morewood into the user name box.

  Next to me, the young and exuberant Kinko's clerk was repeating his Web spiel to the curly-haired man with the dark sweat suit. I hit the tab button and moved into the text box for the password.

  The clue Teenage was easier. In our junior year of high school, we'd gone to Jordan Goldman's house late one Friday night. There were maybe ten of us. Jordan had found out where his father hid a porn video. None of us had ever seen one before. We all watched, laughing uncomfortably, making the usual snide remarks and feeling deliciously naughty. When we needed a name for our intramural softball team, Jordan suggested we use the movie's stupid title: Teenage Sex Poodles.

  I typed in Sex Poodles under the password. I swallowed hard and clicked the Sign In icon.

  I glanced over at the curly-haired man. He was focused on a Yahoo! search. I looked back toward the front desk. The woman in the business suit was frowning at another too-happy at-midnight Kinko's staff member.

  I waited for the error message. But that didn't happen this time. A welcome screen rolled into view. On the top, it read:

  Hi, Morewood!

  Underneath that it said:

  You have 1 email in your box.

  My heart felt like a bird banging against my rib cage.

  I clicked on the New Mail icon and did the leg shake again. No Shauna around to stop it. Through the store window I could see my tethered Chloe. She spotted me and started barking. I put a finger to my lips and signaled for her to hush up. The email message appeared: Washington Square Park. Meet me at

  the southeast corner.

  Five o'clock tomorrow.

  You'll be followed.

  And on the bottom:

  No matter what, I love you.

  Hope, that caged bird that just won't die, broke free. I leaned back. Tears flooded my eyes, but for the first time in a long while, I let loose a real smile.

  Elizabeth. She was still the smartest person I knew.

  Chapter 20

  At two A.M. I crawled into bed and rolled onto my back. The ceiling started doing the too-many-drinks spins. I grabbed the sides of the bed and hung on.

  Shauna had earlier asked if I had ever been tempted to cheat after getting married. She'd added that last part ' the "after getting married" part ' because she already knew about the other incident.

  Technically, I did cheat on Elizabeth once, though cheating doesn't really fit. Cheating denotes doing harm to another. It didn't harm Elizabeth ' I'm sure of that ' but during my freshman year of college, I partook in a rather pitiful rite of passage known as the collegiate one-night stand. Out of curiosity, I guess. Purely experimental and strictly physical. I didn't like it much. I'll spare you the corny sex-without-love-is-meaningless clich+
!. It's not. But while I think it's fairly easy to have sex with someone you don't particularly know or like, it's hard to stay the night. The attraction, as it were, was strictly hormonal. Once the, uh, release took place, I wanted out. Sex is for anyone; the aftermath is for lovers.

  Pretty nice rationalization, don't you think?

  If it matters, I suspect Elizabeth probably did something similar. We both agreed that we would try to "see" ' "see" being such a vague, all-encompassing term ' other people when we first got to college. Any indiscretion could thus be chalked up to yet another commitment test. Whenever the subject was raised, Elizabeth denied that there had ever been anyone else. But then again, so did I.

  The bed continued to spin as I wondered: What do I do now?

  For one thing, I wait for five o'clock tomorrow. But I couldn't just sit back until then. I'd done enough of that already, thank you very much. The truth was ' a truth I didn't like to admit even to myself ' I hesitated at the lake. Because I was scared. I climbed out of the water and paused. That gave whomever a chance to hit me. And I didn't fight back after that first strike. I didn't dive for my assailant. I didn't tackle him or even make a fist. I simply went down. I covered up and surrendered and let the stronger man take away my wife.

  Not again.

  I considered approaching my father-in-law again ' it hadn't escaped my attention that Hoyt might have been less than forthcoming during my previous visit ' but what good would that do? Hoyt was either lying or... or I don't know what. But the message had been clear. Tell no one. The only way I could maybe get him to talk would be by telling him what I saw on that street cam. But I wasn't ready to do that yet.

  I got out of bed and hopped on the computer. I started surfing again. By morning, I had something of a plan.

  Gary Lamont, Rebecca Schayes's husband, didn't panic right away. His wife often worked late, very late, sometimes spending the night on an old cot in the far right corner of her studio. So when four in the morning rolled around and Rebecca still wasn't home, he grew only concerned, not panicked.

  At least, that's what he told himself.

  Gary called her studio, but the answering machine picked up. Again that wasn't rare. When Rebecca was working, she hated interruptions. She didn't even keep a phone extension in the darkroom. He left a message and settled back into their bed.