cardboard mailer.
I stared at the Express Mail address tag. My name was on it, printed in neat block letters. The return address was labeled “Mr. John Oakhurst,” with a Las Piernas address, on a street I didn’t recognize. I doubted it was a real one. After all, I realized, the package had to have been mailed the day before — when only Hocus knew I would be in Bakersfield to receive it.
“Do you usually do this sort of thing?” I asked. “Hold mail for customers, I mean?”
“No, but my manager said this John Oakhurst asked us to do him a favor, because he’d be sending a big fax later and you needed this to go with it. But the fax didn’t have his name on it, so I guess they were held in separate places.”
I pulled on the tab that would open the cardboard envelope.
“Don’t!” Cassidy shouted, but it was too late. The package was open.
Nothing exploded.
The inside of the envelope had been lined in bubble wrap. Within the lining there was a small object and nothing more.
“Please don’t reach in there,” Cassidy said, sounding as if he might actually be on the verge of becoming upset. “And please don’t go opening any other gifts from Hocus.”
I didn’t answer him. I was staring at the object.
It was a vial of blood.
17
THE ROOM STARTED CLOSING IN ON ME. I shoved the envelopes toward Cassidy and hurried outside. It was a while before Cassidy came out of the store, carrying the faxes and the package. He found me leaning my folded arms against the roof of the car, resting my forehead on them, trying very hard not to let this be the moment when every impulse that had been urging me to become hysterical won.
“Irene?”
I looked up at him.
“You look a little peaked,” he said. “Want to sit down in the car for a while? We don’t have to go anywhere. We can stay here until you’re feeling better.”
I stepped away from the door and let him unlock it.
“I’m okay,” I said.
“Sure,” he said.
He rolled down the windows and pulled out of the parking lot. I didn’t talk to him, and it was a while before I realized that we weren’t headed back to my mother-in-law’s house.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You need me to give you directions, don’t you?”
“Naw, I remember the way back,” he said.
“Where are you going?”
He smiled. “I guess I don’t know the exact answer to that question. But I think the general plan will do us some good.”
He made a turn, and soon we were on a road that led to an orange grove. He pulled over. “Take a deep breath,” he said, turning off the engine.
The delicate fragrance of orange blossoms filled the car. Not as exotic as what might be found at a department store’s perfume counter, perhaps, but no less enticing for its sweet simplicity.
In the midst of this grove of bright green leaves and small white blossoms, inhaling a scent I associate with cleanliness and innocence, I said, “I want to kill those assholes.”
“I see the shock has worn off,” Cassidy said. “Take another deep breath.”
“What is this? Aromatherapy?”
“Sure,” he said easily. “You can work through all five stages of grief, one breath at a time.”
“Great,” I said. “These twisted sons of bitches may be torturing my husband while we sit here. Or maybe they’re just draining his blood and mailing it to me one vial at a time. But the important thing is that I’ll be in perfect mental balance because I’ve taken time to ‘stop and smell the flowers.’ ”
He didn’t say anything. I ranted at him for another ten minutes or so, at which point I finally caught on, said, “Oh shit,” and shut up.
Cassidy stayed silent, just looking out at the trees. Finally he said, “Abductions are always triangles. Lot of folks think about the taker, or the taken, but not about that third side of the triangle, the person who waits and worries and — maybe worst of all — wonders. Wonders what the takers are doing to the person they love.”
I felt a tightness in my chest.
I must have looked bad, because Cassidy waited. After I had calmed down a little he said, “The takers know you care. They know you’re going to worry. It’s in their best interest to keep you worried. So they do things like this, to ensure your compliance. Truth is, Frank probably doesn’t even know he’s missing this little vial of blood. They probably took it from him while he was loaded up with morphine or Versed. They’ve got control of him. They want to take control of you as well.”
“So you take me to an orange grove so I can blow off steam, get back in control of myself.”
“They’ll keep you going twenty-four hours a day if you let them. They’ll exhaust you. Later on, when we find them, you may not have the luxury of fifteen or twenty minutes in an orange grove.” He looked out at the trees. “Scent is one of the strongest psychological links to memory we have, and you need to be able to remember to stay calm — so the next time they try to rile you, you think of orange blossoms, Irene.”
