Fear itself

“Don’t mention it.”

“No, I-”

“I mean that literally,” said Pool. “Don’t mention it.”

The drive back to Georgetown was a typical Beltway nightmare. At the 66/495 maze, an SUV cut over into Linda’s lane, nearly clipping the Geo’s front bumper, and when she hit the horn, the driver gave her the finger. Linda thought about flashing her shield at him, just to give him a scare, then remembered that the days when you could cow somebody with a badge were long gone-nowadays you had to have a weapon to back it up.

Not that she would have drawn her weapon on a civilian over a traffic dispute even if she had been packing. But Linda had learned over the years that being armed changed the way a woman, especially a small woman, thought about herself in relation to the world. And now that she was no longer strong enough or steady enough on her feet to make use of the martial arts training she’d received at the Academy, it seemed to Linda that the Bureau should have insisted she carry a gun, at least until or unless she developed any optical or cognitive symptoms.

But there was no sense letting her mind wander down that path, Linda reminded herself. The FBI wasn’t fair, the disease wasn’t fair, and life wasn’t fair-big hairy deal, film at eleven. Better to concentrate on her job. Because she still had a job to do, an important one-the only hang-up was that until God in his infinite fucking wisdom decided to get Maheu off her ass, she’d have to do it on her own time.

The Georgetown brownstone was dark when Linda got home, which was not unusual: Jim and Gloria Gee were both attorneys, dinkies (double income, no kids) who dined out more often than in. Gloria had left a note for Linda-”dinner and a movie, back late”-on the kitchen table, along with the classifieds, which she had thoughtfully opened to the apartment rentals. Not a particularly subtle hint, thought Linda-somehow things had gone from the stay-as-long-as-you-need-to stage to the don’t-let-the-door-hit-you-in-the- ass-on-your-way-out stage without any intermediary steps.

Linda glanced through the listings while her pot pie nuked, but without much hope. She already knew what she’d find in her price range-diddly-and wondered again whether she ought to take Pender up on the offer he’d made toward the end of the party last night (Linda hadn’t split early after all) of a spare room in the old house above the canal. Be nice and peaceful out there-unless of course Pender had ulterior motives. Then she looked down at herself and laughed. Yeah, right-you’re a fucking femme fatale. It’s the ankle braces-they drive men wild.

After dinner Linda went into the living room and logged on to the Gees’ computer, set up a phony Netscape user profile for an alter ego, then accessed phobia.com, the PWSPD Association web site, and signed into the chat room, selecting a user name of Skairdykat and a password of boo. The chat room counter went from 0 to 1-Linda was alone. She clicked onto the archives, read back a few weeks until she had the feel of the lingo, then began typing her first entry into the dialogue box:

Hi everybody. Skairdykat here. Pleez dont flame me if I screw up, I’ve never done this before. Mostly cuz I never saw a chat room I wanted to join before. But reading you guys stories is like reading about my own life. It feels like coming home. Anyway, heres my story: I am…

(No need to narrow the age or sex down yet; if he bites, we can set up a meeting and have our choice of decoys in place.)

single, and I have been deathly afraid of…

(Might as well use the snakes-it’ll sound more believable than if you make something up.)

snakes since as long as I can remember. Thats ophidiophobia, as most of you probably know. The worst part is, I live…

(Keep it vague-if you get any nibbles, you can improvise something later.)

by myself, and sometimes I get so obsessed there might be a snake outside I cant even bring myself to leave the house. I am eager to chat with and maybe someday meet someone who knows how I feel. So if anybody…

(How to put this? Don’t want to be too obvious, but if the killer is using the PWSPD web site for trolling, he’s going to want to take it private as soon as possible.)

wants to contact me directly, my e-mail address is [email protected]….

(Anything else? Not yet. After all, you’re trolling, too. Graceful exit.)

Anyway, thanks for being there, all of you brave PWSPDs. Hope to hear from somebody soon. TT4N, Skairdy

After reading her entry over and making a few minor corrections, Linda positioned the cursor on the SUBMIT box, took a deep breath, then with a single click of her mouse turned poor Skairdy into a piece of bait dangling from a hook somewhere in cyberspace.

8

Dorie opened her eyes and took stock. Her forehead hurt, and there was a little knot-she must have hit the floor with her head, or the corner of the table on her way down-but there was no blood and no egg, just a tender spot above the hairline. At least you didn’t break your nose again, she told herself-it’s already got all the character it can stand.

Shaken, she sat up slowly, careful to keep her back to the window. Dorie had been dreaming about masks, avoiding them, and fainting at the sight of them for as long as she could remember. But having hallucinations, fainting over masks that aren’t even there-that would be a new and disturbing development.

Unless of course there really was a mask in the window. But the only way to tell for sure would be to turn around, and she wasn’t ready for that, not with her head still pounding and her heart racing and the room spinning and her stomach…

Whoops, here it comes. Dorie turned her head to the side just in time to save her clothes. When she finished vomiting, she crawled a few feet away and collapsed full length onto her side, one arm extended like Adam’s on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Then she remembered reading someplace that headache, nausea, and dizziness were all symptoms of concussion, and that the last thing you should do was give in to the urge to sleep. She tried to raise herself up onto her hands and knees, but it felt as if she were fighting gravity on Jupiter-somehow the planet itself had grown impossibly heavy under her and was pulling her down toward that dreamless darkness.

Fight it, she told herself as she sank back down to the kitchen floor, her head pillowed on her folded arms. Got to fight it. But by then she could no longer remember what she was supposed to be fighting against, or why. Still, she felt vaguely guilty.

“Later, Mom,” she murmured as the darkness closed around her again. “I promise I’ll clean it up later.”

Later.

Still on the floor, but on her back now, with her head pillowed on someone’s lap. Cool damp cloth on her forehead, the rim of a glass touching her lips. She smelled the musty-sharp, cough-medicine smell of brandy, sipped, swallowed, coughed feebly. Then her eyes fluttered open, a man’s hand came over her mouth to stifle her scream, and although the shock to her system was so profound it jarred her down to her soul, Dorie was not terribly surprised to see that the face leaning over her, hovering upside down only inches above her own, was wearing a leering Kabuki mask. Somehow, in fact, it seemed almost inevitable.

Just Another Naked Body 1

Missy opened her eyes early Thursday morning and found herself lying in a strange room, in a bed not her