First off, the account name Bat Street. When Elizabeth and I were growing up, we used to ride our bikes down Morewood Street on the way to the Little League field. There was this creepy old woman who lived in a faded yellow house. She lived alone and scowled at passing kids. Every town has one of those creepy old ladies. She usually has a nickname. In our case, we'd called her:
Bat Lady.
I brought up Bigfoot again. I typed Morewood into the user name box.
Next to me, the young and exuberant Kinko's clerk was repeating his Web spiel to the curly-haired man with the dark sweat suit. I hit the tab button and moved into the text box for the password.
The clue Teenage was easier. In our junior year of high school, we'd gone to Jordan Goldman's house late one Friday night. There were maybe ten of us. Jordan had found out where his father hid a porn video. None of us had ever seen one before. We all watched, laughing uncomfortably, making the usual snide remarks and feeling deliciously naughty. When we needed a name for our intramural softball team, Jordan suggested we use the movie's stupid title:
I typed in Sex Poodles under the password. I swallowed hard and clicked the Sign In icon.
I glanced over at the curly-haired man. He was focused on a Yahoo! search. I looked back toward the front desk. The woman in the business suit was frowning at another too-happy at-midnight Kinko's staff member.
I waited for the error message. But that didn't happen this time. A welcome screen rolled into view. On the top, it read:
Hi, Morewood!
Underneath that it said:
You have 1 email in your box.
My heart felt like a bird banging against my rib cage.
I clicked on the New Mail icon and did the leg shake again. No Shauna around to stop it. Through the store window I could see my tethered Chloe. She spotted me and started barking. I put a finger to my lips and signaled for her to hush up. The email message appeared:
Washington Square Park. Meet me at
the southeast corner.
Five o'clock tomorrow.
You'll be followed.
And on the bottom:
No matter what, I love you.
Hope, that caged bird that just won't die, broke free. I leaned back. Tears flooded my eyes, but for the first time in a long while, I let loose a real smile.
Elizabeth. She was still the smartest person I knew.
Chapter 20
At two A.M. I crawled into bed and rolled onto my back. The ceiling started doing the too-many-drinks spins. I grabbed the sides of the bed and hung on.
Shauna had earlier asked if I had ever been tempted to cheat after getting married. She'd added that last part – the 'after getting married' part – because she already knew about the other incident.
Technically, I did cheat on Elizabeth once, though cheating doesn't really fit. Cheating denotes doing harm to another. It didn't harm Elizabeth – I'm sure of that – but during my freshman year of college, I partook in a rather pitiful rite of passage known as the collegiate one-night stand. Out of curiosity, I guess. Purely experimental and strictly physical. I didn't like it much. I'll spare you the corny sex-without-love-is-meaningless cliche. It's not. But while I think it's fairly easy to have sex with someone you don't particularly know or like, it's hard to stay the night. The attraction, as it were, was strictly hormonal. Once the, uh, release took place, I wanted out. Sex is for anyone; the aftermath is for lovers.
Pretty nice rationalization, don't you think?
If it matters, I suspect Elizabeth probably did something similar. We both agreed that we would try to 'see' – 'see' being such a vague, all-encompassing term – other people when we first got to college. Any indiscretion could thus be chalked up to yet another commitment test. Whenever the subject was raised, Elizabeth denied that there had ever been anyone else. But then again, so did I.
The bed continued to spin as I wondered: What do I do now?
For one thing, I wait for five o'clock tomorrow. But I couldn't just sit back until then. I'd done enough of that already, thank you very much. The truth was – a truth I didn't like to admit even to myself – I hesitated at the lake. Because I was scared. I climbed out of the water and paused. That gave whomever a chance to hit me. And I didn't fight back after that first strike. I didn't dive for my assailant. I didn't tackle him or even make a fist. I simply went down. I covered up and surrendered and let the stronger man take away my wife.
Not again.
I considered approaching my father-in-law again – it hadn't escaped my attention that Hoyt might have been less than forthcoming during my previous visit – but what good would that do? Hoyt was either lying or… or I don't know what. But the message had been clear.
I got out of bed and hopped on the computer. I started surfing again. By morning, I had something of a plan.
Gary Lamont, Rebecca Schayes's husband, didn't panic right away. His wife often worked late, very late, sometimes spending the night on an old cot in the far right corner of her studio. So when four in the morning rolled around and Rebecca still wasn't home, he grew only concerned, not panicked.
At least, that's what he told himself.
Gary called her studio, but the answering machine picked up. Again that wasn't rare. When Rebecca was working, she hated interruptions. She didn't even keep a phone extension in the darkroom. He left a message and settled back into their bed.
Sleep came in fits and spurts. Gary contemplated doing something more, but that would only piss off Rebecca. She was a free spirit, and if there was a tension in their otherwise fulfilling relationship, it had to do with his relatively 'traditional' lifestyle 'clipping' her creative wings. Her terms.
So he gave her space. To unclip her wings or whatever.
By seven in the morning, concern had segued into something closer to genuine fear. Gary's call woke up Arturo Ramirez, Rebecca's gaunt, black-clad assistant.
'I just got in, 'Arturo complained groggily.
Gary explained the situation. Arturo, who had fallen asleep in his clothes, did not bother changing. He ran out the door. Gary promised to meet him at the studio. He hopped on the downtown A.
Arturo arrived first and found the studio door ajar. He pushed it open.
'Rebecca?'
No answer. Arturo called her name again. Still no answer. He entered and scanned the studio. She wasn't there. He opened the darkroom door. The usual harsh smell of film-development acids still dominated, but there was something else, something faint and below the surface that still had the ability to make his hair stand on end.
Something distinctly human.
Gary rounded the corner in time to hear the scream.
Chapter 21
In the morning, I grabbed a bagel and headed west on Route 80 for forty-five minutes. Route 80 in New Jersey is a fairly nondescript strip of pavement. Once you get past Saddle Brook or so, the buildings pretty much vanish and you're faced with identical lines of trees on either side of the road. Only the interstate signs break up the monotony.
As I veered off exit 163 at a town called Gardensville, I slowed the car and looked out at the high grass. My heart started thumping. I had never been here before – I'd purposely avoided this stretch of interstate for the past eight years – but it was here, less than a hundred yards from where I now drove, that they found Elizabeth's body.
I checked the directions I'd printed off last night. The Sussex County coroner's office was on Mapquest.com, so I knew to the tenth of a kilometer how to get there. The building was a blinds closed storefront with no sign or window lettering, a plain brick rectangle with no frills, but then again, did you want any at a morgue? I arrived a few minutes before eight-thirty and pulled around back. The office was still locked up. Good.
A canary-yellow Cadillac Seville pulled into a spot marked Timothy Harper, County Medical Examiner. The man in the car stubbed out a cigarette – it never ceases to amaze me how many M.E.'s smoke – before he stepped out. Harper was my height, a shade under six feet, with olive skin and wispy gray hair. He saw me standing by the door and set his face. People didn't visit morgues first thing in the morning to hear good news.
He took his time approaching me. 'Can I help you?' he said.
'Dr. Harper?'
'Yes, that's right.'
'I'm Dr. David Beck.' Doctor. So we were colleagues. 'I'd like a moment of your time.'
He didn't react to the name. He took out a key and unlocked the door. 'Why don't we sit in my office?'
'Thank you.'
