When She Was Bad

had to.

Lyssy took inventory. His right shoulder was so sore he could scarcely lift his arm, and his clothes were spattered with ketchup or food coloring or something.

Suddenly the silence in the room was broken by a beeping noise coming from the Corder’s living room. A hospital pager-he would have recognized the sound anywhere. But before he could get up, he heard footsteps behind him. He turned, saw his beautiful new friend Lily coming down the stairs wearing a brown sweater and tight-fitting jeans, holding one hand behind her back as if to hide something.

By now, Lyssy had concluded only that this had to have been the birthday party he’d been waiting for. But he was utterly clueless as to how long he’d been out of it, which alter had surfaced and done what to whom, or why his clothes were all stained and spattered. In any event, the usual imperative was in play: fake it as long as you can, hope nobody noticed anything out of what passed for the ordinary around here. “Oh, hi,” he said. “Been upstairs, hunh?”

She came closer, peered deeply into Lyssy’s eyes as though she were looking for something-or someone. “You’re fucking with my head, right? To get even for before, in the arboretum.”

“If you say so,” said Lyssy with a weak chuckle.

Her dark eyes narrowed, then widened again in recognition. “Lyssy?”

“Who else?”

“Oh, swell.” In the living room, the beeping started up again. The girl sheathed the hunting knife she was holding behind her back, took a key ring from her pocket. Dr. Al’s key ring-something else Lyssy would have recognized anywhere. “C’mon, let’s get outta here.”

“I–I can’t. I’m not supposed to leave the premises.”

“Fine by me,” said the girl contemptuously. “Stay here and rot, see if I care.”

7

This is ridiculous, Irene decided as the car pulled up in front of the director’s residence after a journey of fifty, maybe seventy-five yards from the hospital around the corner. It was such a pleasant midsummer evening, after all, with the smell of new-mown grass in the air. Al Corder’s going to open the door, Irene told herself, look at us like what the hell? and there we’ll be, standing on the doorstep with egg on our faces.

But the house was dead quiet and the curtains and blinds drawn upstairs and down. No response when Irene rang the bell, though she and Pender could hear the pretentious, two-toned chimes resounding through the house- Bing-bong, bing-bong. “They’re not answering,” she said, unnecessarily.

“See if it’s locked.”

The knob turned easily in her hand, the sturdy, handsomely brass-bound oak door swung open under the Happy Birthday banner. “Age before beauty,” said Pender, shouldering past Irene with a humorless smile. “Wait here, okay? Just til we know what’s what.”

She understood he was trying to protect her, but even knowing there was something in her personality that both appreciated and elicited that behavior from him, she resented it, and hurried after him.

But he’d only gone as far as the arched, crepe paper-festooned entrance to the Corder’s living room. “Oh, dear God,” she said, looking away quickly-but not quickly enough to prevent the sight from burning itself into her memory. For Al and Cheryl Corder were propped up back-to-back beneath the cheerful birthday bunting and bobbing balloons, bound with coils of rope, their clothes and bodies slashed and shredded, minced flesh and shockingly white bone visible through tatters of bloody cloth, and their faces unrecognizable, so gashed and gouged the features had been all but obliterated. And so much blood-the furniture, the walls, the fireplace, the inside of the curtains, the once-beige carpet, now a Jackson Pollock in crimson and black; even some of the crepe-paper streamers were spattered with gore. Kinch, she mouthed-she’d intended to say it aloud, but no sound emerged.

Pender heard the noise first: an insistent, rhythmic thumping somewhere overhead. He touched a forefinger to his lips, then pointed to the ceiling. When she realized that something or someone was still up there, still inside the house, Irene was torn between a powerful urge to flee and an equally powerful, almost physical need to stick close to Pender.

But it was no contest, really, not with Maxwell back in her world. The first few months after her kidnapping Irene had kept all the shades drawn in her home, even on the second floor, because she couldn’t pass an outside window without imagining his grinning face popping up like a jack-in-the-box. Mirrors were no good either-for a while there, she couldn’t even sit at her vanity for fear she’d see him in the mirror, over her shoulder-and dark rooms were totally unacceptable: her PG amp;E bill had nearly doubled by the time autumn rolled around. And all that despite knowing Maxwell was locked up in a maximum security facility and couldn’t possibly get at her.

So what was the prognosis for PTSD patients who find themselves back in a war zone? Irene asked herself as she hurried after Pender, who had already started up the stairs, moving quietly on his rubber-soled Hush Puppies.

She caught up to him on the second floor landing and followed him so closely down the dusky hallway that she could smell his aftershave. The thumping emanated from behind a closed door with a sign reading My Room, My Mess, My Business. Pender gestured for Irene to step away. With his back against the wall to the side of the doorway, he reached around, turned the knob, and threw the door open.

Inside, the thumping grew more frenzied. Pender peered around the doorjamb, saw a girl’s bedroom with posters of the U.S. Women’s World Cup soccer team on the pale pink walls and stuffed animals crowding the bedspread. On the floor next to the bed a teenage girl lay on her back, her wrists and ankles bound with adhesive tape. Another strip of tape covered her mouth completely-her taut bare midriff jerked spasmodically as she fought to draw breath through nostrils bubbling with snot. A few more minutes and she’d almost certainly have suffocated, Pender thought with a shudder as he knelt beside the girl. What a nightmarish way to go.

Irene had followed him into the room. Call nine-one-one, he mouthed to her over his shoulder. She fished her cell phone out of her purse, took it out into the hall, and closed the door behind her-she didn’t want Alison to have to listen to her telling the police about the bodies downstairs.

“It’s okay, honey, you’re safe now,” Pender crooned soothingly to the girl as he scooped her up in his arms and set her down gently on the bed. “Nobody’s going to hurt you. Bet you’d like to get this damn thing off toot sweet, though.”

Alison nodded. Pender gave her a big clownish wink, pinched her earlobe hard with one hand to distract her, then yanked the tape free with his other hand while she was still in mid-yelp. “Here, blow,” he said, handing her his handkerchief. When she was done blowing, she gave it back to him; he wrinkled his lumpy nose and held it out at arm’s length. “Call in the Haz-Mat team,” he said.

When Irene returned, Alison was sitting up and asking for water-her throat was raw from screaming into the gag. Irene said she’d get it, and went back out into the hall to find the bathroom.

The first door she tried was a linen closet, its neatly folded sheets and towels lightly scented with lilac water. But the second door opened onto a spacious bathroom, nearly as large as Alison’s bedroom. Inside, the body of a heavyset woman with a mullet hairdo lay jackknifed over the rim of the bathtub, head down, ass up; the acrid, new-penny smell of blood filled Irene’s nostrils and brought tears to her eyes.

A few minutes later one of the first cops to arrive on the scene discovered Wally’s body on the floor outside the downstairs bathroom, and the body count was complete.

PART TWO

Mama’s Place