just finished perusing. Then he stretched with his arms over his head, noticing it was getting close to one p.m. For a moment he toyed with the idea of asking Jacqueline to join him for lunch. They’d been lunching fairly regularly over the last month, and he wondered if it was time to take their relationship to the next level. From his perspective, he thought she’d been making some overtures in that regard, which he’d come to believe he ought to take advantage of, as his relationship with his relatively new wife, Stephanie, had take a serious hit after the birth of their toddler, Jonathan. As hard as Ben had been working to get iPS USA off the ground, he felt he deserved some pleasurable diversion, which he wasn’t getting at home.
“I’m going to be heading out now,” Jacqueline said, standing in the open connecting doorway.
“Oh?” Ben questioned. Jacqueline had taken him completely by surprise.
“When you requested no meetings for today, I thought it would be a good day for me to take my mother for her annual checkup. Do you need anything before I go?”
Ben swallowed a laugh and said, “No, I’m fine. Take your mother to the doctor. I’ll just sit here and pine away.”
Jacqueline did a double take at the comment. Momentarily at a loss for words, she merely stared.
“The place has been so quiet,” Ben explained. “Actually, I’ll be leaving in a few minutes myself.”
“Okay, fine,” Jacqueline said quickly, willing to accept Ben’s explanation even though it wasn’t an explanation. “See you Monday.”
“See you Monday,” Ben echoed.
After Jacqueline had left, Ben sat at his desk for a few moments, wondering how much Jacqueline’s attractiveness had influenced his decision to hire her, above and beyond her intelligence and superb resume. With Stephanie it had been her body and her willingness to use it that had been key.
On his way out Ben stopped into Carl’s office, where Carl revealed that iPS Rapid had sent him a flurry of e- mails that morning. “They seem to be very interested in an outright sale,” the CFO said. “I don’t know whether to be encouraged or to be more circumspect.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Ben said, confident in Carl’s professional skills. “I’m heading home. Maybe you should do the same. Jacqueline has already left.”
“I’ve too much to do. See you Monday.”
Emerging into the sun on busy Fifth Avenue, Ben enjoyed a mild surge of euphoria, having already adjusted to the disappointment concerning Jacqueline’s unavailability. The weather was beautiful, with a strong smell of spring in the air. Things couldn’t be better at iPS USA, save for Satoshi not calling, but in the face of the blue sky and sunshine, he was even optimistic about that. He liked the fact that the weekend had arrived. And last of all, he had the sense that he’d at least broken the ice with Jacqueline with his clever comment about pining away when she left.
With an enjoyable springiness to his step, he headed toward the garage but then stopped at 57th Street. Luckily, he remembered then and not later that he’d forgotten Satoshi’s address. He could recall the street easily enough, but he couldn’t remember the number. Happily, he went back up to his desk to get it.
Because of the upcoming weekend, other people were leaving early as well, and Ben had to wait at the garage for longer than he liked. But it wasn’t all bad, and being in a good mood, he had the opportunity to flirt with several secretaries while he waited for his Range Rover to be brought up from the garage’s depths. As a monthly customer, he did get some benefit in terms of getting his car sooner than day renters.
Once inside his car with the door closed, Ben promptly entered 417 Pleasant Lane in his GPS before turning on his CD player. Insulated from the noise of the city, he selected a Mozart CD and allowed himself to be surrounded by pure audio pleasure.
Traffic moved steadily uptown. As usual, he took the upper level of the George Washington Bridge to give him a stupendous unobstructed view of the sheer Palisade cliffs running along the New Jersey side of the river, accompanied by Mozart’s piano concerto number twenty-one in C major.
On reaching the New Jersey side, Ben took the second exit as the GPS advised. The directions took him to a small run-down area with a number of abandoned two-story commercial brick buildings, reminding him of a fact that few people knew: Fort Lee had been the Hollywood of the country before Hollywood, California, took center stage in the movie business. Pleasant Lane turned out to be anything but. It was a relatively short three-block street. Interspersed between the abandoned commercial buildings were small cottage houses, all of approximately the same design. Most appeared to be also abandoned, with broken windows and front doors ajar. There was debris everywhere, including a few tireless, rusted vehicles resting on their axles and a number of mattresses with their coil springs poking up through the ticking.
“You have arrived,” the GPS said in a pleasant baritone as Ben pulled over to the curb. “I certainly have arrived,” Ben said mockingly. He studied the house. It looked slightly better than its neighbors in that the windows were intact and the front door was closed. What bothered Ben was that there was no indication whatsoever that the house was occupied. Then he noticed something else that was even more disturbing. Although the front door was closed, a central pane of glass was broken out, with just a few shards clinging desperately to the window’s frame.
Certain that no one could be living in the house and beginning to wonder if he’d been deliberately sent to the wrong address as some kind of bizarre joke, Ben opened his driver’s-side door and started to slide out of his car. But he didn’t get far. Blanketing the area was the stink of putrefaction, strong enough for Ben to gag before he managed to get back in the car and slam the door. Even in the confines of the car he gagged a few more times as if he was going to vomit.
Recovering to a degree, Ben looked at the house in horror, frantically trying to envision what had happened and what he should do. The house and the surrounding area smelled overwhelmingly of death, a stench Ben had rarely smelled, and only as a boy coming up on a dead animal, such as a rabbit or a squirrel in the woods. But Ben knew this was no rabbit or squirrel.
Ben grabbed a rag from the car and held it against his nose. Preparing himself for the smell, he got out of his SUV and started up the front walk.
Although he gagged several more times, he made it to the front steps. He knew he should call 911, but he wanted to make absolutely certain what he smelled was not a dog or some other kind of large animal. Stepping up on the porch, Ben could see shards of glass peppering the ground. To avoid leaving fingerprints, he used the rag he had been holding against his nose to open the door. It was unlocked.
He stepped from bright sunlight into relative darkness. He didn’t have to go far. There in the living room were the bloated remains of six people, all lying prone with their hands on the back of their heads and their faces resting in dried pools of blackened congealed blood.
Ben nearly fainted at the sight and the markedly more intense smell of death. He looked quickly at each corpse to find Satoshi, only to be surprised when he realized the scientist was not among the six. He knew he should get out of the house, as the smell was truly overpowering, but the circumstances had him paralyzed. He told himself to move, but his body refused, leaving him frozen in time and space and utter silence. For a moment he didn’t even breathe and in that instant he heard it. It was a high-pitched, soft keening. Unsure if it was a real sound or if it was a lamentation emanating from his own brain, Ben listened again. It was still there—and then it was gone.
“What the hell?” Ben questioned. He was still unsure if the sound had been real or imagined. Fighting an urge to flee the scene, Ben stepped over toward the staircase. At the base he stopped and stared up into the murkiness of the second floor. He was about to declare the disturbing sound a figment of his imagination when he heard it again. This time it sounded as if it was coming from the second floor.
With the hackles on the back of his neck standing straight up, Ben climbed the stairs, keeping his rag pressed against his nose and breathing through his mouth. By the time he got to the top, the sound had again disappeared. Ben stopped. There were two dormered bedrooms connected by a short hallway, with a small bathroom off the hallway. He could see that in each bedroom the bureaus had been searched, as the drawers were open and the contents strewn across the floors.
Ben checked both bedrooms. Each had a small closet whose contents were also pulled out and thrown onto the floor. The first bedroom had a small drop-down desk. Its contents and drawers were on the floor as well. It was apparent to Ben that someone had trashed the house, most likely searching for something. At that point Ben heard the sound again, louder than it had been downstairs. At first it seemed to be coming from the bathroom, but when he checked it, he sensed that it was coming from a built-in bookcase directly across from the bathroom doorway. It
