fingers.
Looking at her, he saw a little girl. Not much older than his own kid. It made him ache with worry about Constance. He thought: I'd better call the cops, tell them Constance is missing…
No. He knew what they'd say: It hadn't been long enough. Give her time. And if they picked her up when nothing was wrong she'd be so mad at him…
He forced himself to concentrate on Aleutia. 'Look, Aleutia – you had a cocaine relapse, that's all. It's easy to do. We haven't had a chance to talk much and there's some stuff – Listen, Crack gets you two ways. One, getting off is a way of escaping from all the shit, right? Addictive personalities. We've talked about that. Second – and this is important, Aleutia – it gets to you neurologically. Meaning it messes with your brain chemistry. It pushes your brain-buttons, so to speak. You ever see that film of the white rat that's got a wire running into its brain? The rat pushes a button to stimulate the pleasure centre of the brain and it becomes this little furry button pushin' machine. That's all it can do, it doesn't eat or sleep, it just pushes that fucking button till it dies, girl. It reprogrammed itself that way.'
'Oh God, that's fucked up.' Her face crumpling. 'What're you saying, we're like robots? Programming and shit?' Tears streaking her makeup.
'Only up to a point. You get trapped. Neurologically trapped.'
'It's like a fucking roach motel,' she said miserably, reaching for a clean tissue.
He nodded, thinking about the baby in her belly: trapped in the trapped. He took a deep breath. 'But if you get off the shit, and give yourself a whole new system of rewards, well, eventually, you can get free. It takes time for the brain to get normal. And holding on till then takes help from outside the trap. What you need to do, maybe, is think about going to a halfway house. Inpatient recovery home. For six months, say…'
Aleutia just shook her head. After a moment she said, 'Can I smoke a cigarette?'
Before he could answer, the phone rang. Aleutia was startled as he lunged at it. 'Yeah?'
'Mr. Garner? This is Terry. Um – her car's there. But I swear – Constance's just not at this mall. And all the stores are closed now…'
Ephram was sitting in his living room at the desk, writing in his journal. The old fashioned rolltop was the only piece of furniture in the room, except for the LA-Z-Boy recliner by the CD player. He was listening to Franz Schubert.
Ephram wrote in his journal to soothe himself, after the irritation of his labours over Megan's body.
He wrote, 'For 18 July 199 -':
… found that the large wire clippers worked very well to remove her fingertips, and I disposed of the fingertips quite confidently off a pier, finger food for the crabs, ha ha. Disposed of the clippers off the pier also.
The body presented another problem. The sea cannot be trusted with a cadaver. As planned, tied it to the underside of a train. This had to be carefully timed in order to avoid discovery of the body by railroad workers before the train should begin its work. All went well, thank the Spirit. The train dragged the body a goodly distance, face down on the cinders, making shreds of the face and many other identification details and of course providing a reasonable explanation for the death, if no coroner chooses to look too closely. After the ropes broke, it dropped the body. I removed the ropes. Some drugged girl wandering across a railroad yard… I of course used the blowtorch to remove body hair… Perhaps a full incinerator would be ideal after all and when I find another wealthy subject I will shore up my bank account and look into the purchase of an incinerator big enough to do the job… After disposing of Twenty-six I traced Twenty-seven by her pscent, ha ha, finding her outside one of those dreadful arcades at the Southshore Mall…
Garner almost collapsed with relief when he saw Constance coming up the sidewalk. He didn't think about the odd, drifty way she was walking, didn't think about it consciously at first, till she came into the kitchen with him. Then he was hit by one incongruity after another.
''Where's your necklace?' She was never without that tacky gold-letter necklace that spelled out her name.
'Hm?' She looked at him from the other side of a fog bank. 'Um – I don't know.' Indifferent. Normally she'd have run around like a decapitated chicken, looking for the necklace.
She looked tired, too. She didn't smell like crack smoke or pot, but… all the other signs were there. She was wobbly on her feet. Not meeting his eyes. Distancing. Indifference to what used to be important to her.
How could it happen so fast? It just didn't happen that way overnight.
'What is it, hon?' he said gently. 'Was it cocaine or what?'
'What do you mean?' Her voice dreamily monotone. Normally she would have said, Da-ad! I'm sure! Gross!
'Where's the car, Constance? I didn't see it outside.'
'Car?' She blinked. Twice. 'Oh. God. I left it at the mall. I'm sorry.' She smiled distantly. 'Happiness comes in places you never expect, didn't you say that once, Dad?'
'Uh – yeah.'
'You were right. I would never expect… a guy like…' She shut her mouth. Rather abruptly.
'A guy like who, Constance? Hon – did someone give you drugs?'
'No.' Soft-spoken conviction. Convincing understatement.
'You fall in love?' That was a kind of drugging. 'Falling in love' released hormones, endorphins, made you feel drugged. He knew it was grasping at straws but he grasped at it anyway.
'Sort of.'
'Sort of? Who with? Some guy you met at the mall?'
'Yeah. His name's… Michael. And he's leaving town.' And I can't stand to stay around this summer without him. So…' Suddenly she got all chirpy, sitting up straight and beaming at him as she asked it, as if to say, How could you say no, Dad? 'Could I go visit his family in Los Angeles? They'll chaperone us.'
She was explaining, all this with uncharacteristic verbal clarity. Maybe it was just an infatuation drunkenness, after all.
'This is pretty sudden,' he said. 'Can't I meet this guy before you take trips with his family? I mean, you only met him yourself today, sweetie.'
'Um – sometime. You can meet him sometime. I better go pick up the car, okay?'
'I'll go with you,' Garner said, watching for her reaction. She frowned, but didn't argue.
They went. They took the last bus and picked up the car. It looked abandoned in the midst of the vast parking lot. In silence, they drove home. Garner cooked dinner; she ate her food mechanically but thoroughly. She continued to deny any drug use; quite convincingly, though with a weird detachment. Normally an accusation of that sort would have made her first outraged and then sulky.
She went up to her room, to go to bed early.
Garner finally dropped off to sleep about three a.m. He woke at six, knowing something was wrong.
Knowing, with a cold-sweat certainty, that Constance had gone.
2
Los Angeles, a Day Earlier
Prentice drove the rented Tercel down Sunset to Highland, made his way to Barham, bypassing the freeway where sunlight lanced off the thick metallic flow of traffic. He followed the curving road through the hills, past condos and ranch homes, and down into Burbank. His eyes burned as he drove into the valley. The palm trees looked gray as dead skin here.
Arthwright had a development deal with Sunrise Studios and they gave him a little bungalow office on the old studio lot. Sunrise had bought the lot from MGM; somebody else had recently bought Sunrise, Prentice had forgotten who. A soft drink company or an oil company. Or possibly a soft drink company owned by an oil company which was maybe owned by a plastics conglomerate. The Security guard at the gate's little Checkpoint Charlie – a black guy in cop-style mirrored sunglasses – scanned a clipboard list to be sure Prentice really did have an appointment with Arthwright, then directed him to Parking Area F.
'F for full,' Prentice muttered, looking at the rows of Porsches and Jags. There was only one empty space,
