'Yes. But it doesn't matter. We're watching him in real time. The moment he reads the message, we'll see it too.'
'Okay, let me know when.'
Wu squinted at the screen. 'He just brought up the Bigfoot site. It should be any second now.'
I typed in bigfoot. com and hit the return button.
My right leg started jack hammering. It does that when I'm nervous. Shauna put her hand on my knee. My knee slowed to a stop. She took the hand off. My knee stayed still for a minute, and then it started up again. Shauna put her hand back on my knee. The cycle began again.
Shauna was playing it cool, but I know that she kept sneaking glances at me. She was my best friend. She'd support me to the end. But only an idiot wouldn't be wondering at this juncture if my elevator was stopping at every floor. They say that insanity, like heart disease or intelligence, is hereditary. The thought had been running through my mind since I'd first seen Elizabeth on the street cam. It wasn't a comforting one.
My father died in a car crash when I was twenty. His car toppled over an embankment. According to an eyewitness – a truck driver from Wyoming – my father's Buick drove straight off it. It had been a cold night. The road, while well plowed, was slick.
Many suggested – well, suggested in whispers anyway – that he committed suicide. I don't believe it. Yes, he had been more withdrawn and quiet in his last few months. And yes, I often wonder if all that made him more susceptible to an accident. But suicide? No way.
My mother, always a fragile person of seemingly gentle neuroses, reacted by slowly losing her mind. She literally shrank into herself. Linda tried to nurse her for three years, until even she agreed that Mom needed to be committed. Linda visits her all the time. I don't.
After a few more moments, the Bigfoot home page came up. I found the user name box and typed in Bat Street.
I hit the tab key and in the password text box I typed Teenage. I hit return.
Nothing happened.
'You forgot to click the Sign In icon,' Shauna said.
I looked at her. She shrugged. I clicked the icon.
The screen went white. Then an ad for a CD store came up. The bar on
the bottom went back and forth in a slow wave. The percentage climbed slowly. When it hit about eighteen percent, it vanished and then several seconds later a message appeared.
ERROR – Either the user name or password you entered is not in our database.
'Try again,' Shauna said.
I did. The same error message came up. The computer was telling me the account didn't even exist.
What did that mean?
I had no idea. I tried to think of a reason that the account wouldn't exist.
I checked the time: 8:13.34 P.M.
Could that be the answer? Could it be that the account, like the link yesterday, simply didn't exist yet? I mulled that one over. It was possible, of course, but unlikely.
As though reading my mind, Shauna said, 'Maybe we should wait until eight-fifteen.'
So I tried again at eight-fifteen. At eight-eighteen. At eight twenty.
Nothing but the same error message.
'The feds must have pulled the plug,' Shauna said.
I shook my head, not willing yet to give up.
My leg started shaking again. Shauna used one hand to stop it and one hand to answer her cell phone. She started barking at someone on the other end. I checked the clock. I tried again. Nothing. Twice more. Nothing.
It was after eight-thirty now.
'She, uh, could be late,' Shauna said.
I frowned.
'When you saw her yesterday,' Shauna tried, 'you didn't know where she was, right?'
'Right.'
'So maybe she's in a different time zone,' Shauna said. 'Maybe that's why she's late.'
'A different time zone?' I frowned some more. Shauna shrugged.
We waited another hour. Shauna, to her credit, never said I told you so. After a while she put a hand on my back and said, 'Hey, I got an idea.'
I turned to her.
'I'm going to wait in the other room,' Shauna said. 'I think that might help.'
'How do you figure?'
'See, if this were a movie, this would be the part where I get all fed up by your craziness and storm out and then bingo, the message appears, you know, so only you see it and everyone still thinks you're crazy. Like on Scooby-Doo when only he and Shaggy see the ghost and no one believes them?'
I thought about it. 'Worth a try,' I said.
'Good. So why don't I go wait in the kitchen for a while? Take your time. When the message comes in, just give a little shout.'
She stood.
'You're just humoring me, aren't you?' I said.
Shauna thought about it. 'Yeah, probably.'
She left then. I turned and faced the screen. And I waited.
Chapter 18
Nothing's happening,' Eric Wu said. 'Beck keeps trying to sign on, but all he gets is an error message.'
Larry Gandle was about to ask a follow-up question, when he heard the elevator rev up. He checked the clock.
Rebecca Schayes was right on time.
Eric Wu turned away from his computer. He looked at Larry Gandle with the kind of eyes that make a man take a step back. Gandle took out his gun – a nine- millimeter this time. Just in case. Wu frowned. He moved his bulk to the door and flipped off the light.
They waited in the dark.
Twenty seconds later, the elevator stopped on their floor.
Rebecca Schayes rarely thought about Elizabeth and Beck anymore. It had, after all, been eight years. But this morning events had stirred up some long-dormant sensations. Nagging sensations.
About the 'car accident.'
After all these years, Beck had finally asked her about it. Eight years ago, Rebecca had been prepared to tell him all about it. But Beck hadn't returned her calls. As time went by – and after an arrest had been made – she saw no point in dredging up the past. It would only hurt Beck. And after KillRoy arrest, it seemed irrelevant.
But the nagging sensation – the sensation that Elizabeth's bruises from the 'car accident' were somehow a precursor to her murder – lingered, even though it made no sense. More than that, the nagging sensation taunted her, making her wonder if she, Rebecca, had insisted, really insisted, on finding out the truth about the 'car accident,' maybe, just maybe, she could have saved her friend.
The lingering, however, faded away over time. At the end of the day, Elizabeth had been her friend, and no matter how close you are, you get over a friend's death. Gary Lamont had come into her life three years ago and changed everything. Yes, Rebecca Schayes, the bohemian photographer from Greenwich Village, had fallen in love with a money-grubbing Wall Street bond trader. They'd gotten married and moved into a trendy high-rise on the Upper West Side.
Funny how life worked.
Rebecca stepped into the freight elevator and slid the gate down. The lights were out, which was hardly unusual in this building. The elevator started heading up to her floor, the churning sound reverberating off the stone. Sometimes at night, she could hear the horses whinny, but they were silent now. The smell of hay and something probably fouler mingled in the air.
She liked being here at night. The way the solitude blended with the city's night noises made her feel her most 'artsy.'
Her mind started drifting back to the conversation she'd had last night with Gary. He wanted to move out of New York City, preferably to a spacious home on Long Island, at Sands Point, where he'd been raised. The idea of moving to the 'burbs horrified her. More than her love of the city, she knew that it would be the final betrayal of her bohemian roots. She would become what she swore she would never become: her mother and her mother's mother.
The elevator stopped. She lifted the gate and stepped down the corridor. All the lights were off up here. She pulled back her hair and tied it into a thick ponytail. She peered at her watch. Almost nine o'clock. The building would be empty. Of human beings at least.
Her shoes clacked against the cool cement. The truth was – and Rebecca was having a hard time accepting it, she being a bohemian and all – that the more she thought about it, the more she realized that yes, she wanted children, and that the city was a lousy place to raise them. Children need a backyard and swings and fresh air and…
Rebecca Schayes was just reaching a decision – a decision that would have no doubt thrilled her broker husband, Gary – when she stuck her key in the door and opened her studio. She went inside and flipped the light switch.
That was when she saw the weirdly shaped Asian man.
For a moment or two the man simply stared at her. Rebecca stood frozen in his gaze. Then the Asian man stepped to the side, almost behind her, and blasted a fist into the small of her back.
