Fear itself

“Because that’s how much time they’ve budgeted for the job.”

“And if I finish early, he’s only going to come up with some more shit work?”

“I believe that’s the plan.”

“Thanks, Pool. What would I do without you?”

“Hon, you don’t ever want to find out.”

The brownstone in Georgetown was empty again when Linda got home a few minutes after six. Instead of a note on the kitchen table, there was a pink Post-it on the computer in the living room: “L: Prefer you not use this machine. Thanks, G.”

Fine, thought Linda-I can take a hint. Still, as she reached into her purse for her cell phone, she was surprised at how badly the rejection hurt. Tears in her eyes, lump in her throat, empty feeling in the pit of her stomach. Oh, grow up, Abrootz, she ordered herself. Just grow the fuck up.

“Pender.”

“Ed, it’s Linda. I-”

“Linda! Good work-thanks for getting back to me so quickly. Here’s what I need: First of all, forget Maheu. Rule number one for getting along in the Bureau: Better to ask forgiveness than permission. Okay?”

“Yes, but I-”

“Good. Now, what I want you to do: I want you to log on to that web site…”

“Ed.”

“…and see if you can contact the webmaster or the system administrator, whatever they call it, find out whether-”

“Ed!”

“What?”

“I’m not in the office, and I haven’t gotten any messages from you. I was just calling to ask you if your offer of a spare room is still open.”

“Absolutely. There’s a key under the stone Buddha on the back porch. Pick out any bedroom but the first-that one’s mine-help yourself to anything you need.”

“Thanks so much. Now, what were you-”

“Dorie Bell’s disappeared.”

“Oh, shit.”

“My sentiments ex-” He broke off in midsyllable. Linda heard someone yelling in the background, then Pender shouting, “FBI! I’m FBI, don’t shoot!”

“Ed? Ed, what’s going on?”

“Linda? Still there?”

“I’m here, Ed.”

“Barney Fife just showed up-looks like I’m going to have to get back to you.”

“Ed, wait-”

“Gotta go.”

More shouting in the background, then the line went dead.

7

They say when you’ve been shot or stabbed you don’t feel the pain right away. Not so with a broken nose, as Dorie could have testified even before this most recent fracture. The agony is immediate-sharp and centralized at first, then spreading outward from its locus, swelling and blossoming until it envelops your entire head, which feels as big as a float in the Thanksgiving Day parade. Then, just when you think it can’t get any worse, the throbbing begins-slow, rolling waves with barely enough time between ebb and flood, between dread and pain, to form a wordless prayer, much less a coherent thought.

And yet, as she lay on her back in the darkness, vaguely aware that she was drowning in her own blood, a stray thought did manage to insinuate itself into Dorie’s consciousness, complete, discrete, in a disembodied voice that was somehow familiar, though not her own: There are worse things in life than bleeding to death.

Yeah, or drowning, she answered quickly, before the tide could pull her under again.

Thank heaven for pure dumb luck, thought Simon, ruefully rubbing his brow, just below the hairline to the left of the widow’s peak. He knew it was only an accident of timing that he’d ducked his head to go titty-diving just as Dorie had brought her head up to butt him, so that instead of catching him in the nose with her forehead, she’d caught him in the forehead with her nose. Broke it again, too, judging by the amount of blood.

He crawled toward the sound of her moaning-an eerie, bubbling sound. The closer he got, the more blood there was-his palms were sticky from crawling through it, the knees of his trousers were damp by the time he reached her, and when he rolled her onto her side to prevent her from drowning, her bare skin was wet and slick with warm blood.

Not as unpleasant a sensation as he might have thought. In fact, it reminded him a little of bathing Missy-the feel of soft, cushiony flesh beneath slippery-smooth wet skin-only without the attendant taboos, of course. Unlike Missy’s, Dorie’s body was Simon’s to do as he pleased with, for as long as he could keep her alive-and contingent, as always, upon the amount of fear they could generate together.

Because without the fear, dead or alive, it was just another naked body, and naked bodies, per se, had never held all that much fascination for Simon. Which brought him back to the question of the moment: what to do about this one. Stop the bleeding, of course. Clean her up a little. Hog-tie her, hands to ankles, keep her out of mischief. And no gag: the poor thing’d be breathing through her mouth for days, if she lasted that long. Maybe throw a spare mattress up against the side door leading to the garage: that was the weak spot for the soundproofing.

But after that, there would be no sense in hanging around. Something that Simon had learned over the years, something most people would never know, was that while anticipation of physical suffering produced fear, the actual pain was itself anodyne. For several more hours, while her agony was in full bloom, Dorie would be incapable of experiencing any viable fear.

Inconvenient, sure, but Simon was only mildly disappointed. Because the ejaculatio praecox that had plagued him since early adolescence rendered penile insertion problematical and extended intercourse all but impossible, he was incapable of enjoying prolonged sexual gratification, but when it came to the fear game, Simon Childs was an all-night, do-right, sixty-minute man. The longer he could make a game last, the better he felt about himself.

And since Dorie’s broken nose was going to force him to delay his gratification for another twelve to twenty- four hours, Simon realized as he crawled off into the darkness to find his goggles, by this time tomorrow, barring complications, he could expect to be feeling very, very good about himself.

8

“I said, put your hands up!”

Pender hit the kill switch on his flip phone, then turned slowly. The young Carmel cop was in a textbook two- handed firing crouch, his feet spread shoulder-width apart, his knees slightly bent.

“And I said FBI,” replied Pender in his best command tone. “Which letter didn’t you understand?”

But the kid was starting to tremble from the strain of the position, so Pender adjusted his approach from