Next Time You See Me (14 page)

In the morning I checked out early and then stopped at the hotel restaurant for the continental breakfast that came with the room. Halfway through a bagel and a cup of coffee, a commotion in the lobby seized everyone’s attention. The dining room fell silent and we all watched as a steady stream of uniformed police poured into the hotel.

Whispers erupted followed by raised voices, and then I thought I heard someone say something about a murder. My gaze followed a man who had gotten up to check the lobby and was just then returning to his nearby table.

“Someone was killed,” I heard him tell his wife.

“When?”

“They say last night.”

“Maybe we should leave. Find another hotel.”

“What for? It already happened. Look at all those police—we’re probably safer here than anywhere else in Miami.”

I abandoned what was left of my breakfast, grabbed my suitcase, and rolled it behind me. Cops were stationed in the lobby and some were waiting by the elevators. A man arrived who I assumed was the detective who’d caught the case because he wasn’t in uniform, yet he quickly found the stairwell door and headed upstairs on foot, and the uniforms at the elevator promptly followed.

I approached one of the cops in the lobby, and said, “Detective Karin Schaeffer, Maplewood, New Jersey. I’m on vacation. What happened?” Exaggerations strung on a thread of truth.

“A maid found a body in a utility closet.”

“Time of death?”

“Sometime last night.”

“Do we know who the victim was?”

“Lounge musician. He didn’t show up at work last night. Who did you say you were again?”

“Sorry, I have to catch a flight.”

I hurried out of the hotel, dragging my suitcase, my mind reeling: Ethan could have been murdered any time between six-thirty or so, when I saw him arguing with the man in the elevator, and this morning when his body was found. I should have stayed and given the officer a more accurate description of who I really was. I should have told him about Ethan’s argument with the man in the elevator. But Ethan—
poor Ethan
—was already dead.

Mac’s parents.

Then Mac.

Now Ethan.

And the man in the elevator, his ferocity . . . his tattoo.

A dahlia under his left collarbone.
Just like Mac’s.

That tattoo came into vivid focus of my memory of last night. I had assumed I’d imagined it, but now wondered. Had Ethan been killed for talking to me—the woman who had been pounding the pavement, looking for the owner of the hotel and her boyfriend? My recollection of the Mexican’s eyes, the way he glared at me, told me my guess could very well be right.

Something was really wrong here. I didn’t know what it was, but all of a sudden I knew that if Mac
was
alive, he was in danger. And if he
had
left me it wouldn’t have been to run away from me or our life together, but from something else—the danger was that great.

A
t the airport I changed my route and now, instead of traveling home to New York, I booked myself on the next flight to Cancun. While I waited I bought Internet time at a computer café and got right to work.

Ethan had told me that Ana Maria, the woman in the photo with the man called Dylan—the man I now believed
could
be Mac, under an assumed name—owned a company called Soliz Riviera Enterprises based in Playa del Carmen. The town was described on one travel site as “an ex-pat backwater that has flourished as a tourist center off a highway of mega-hotels hastily developed over the last decade.”

During the nearly two-hour flight, I closed my eyes and tried to nap but kept seeing Ethan and that final smile that had broken through his drunken artifice. I had wanted him to run away and become a
pianist
the way a mother wants her child to talk. I had wanted to wipe off his hair gel and his makeup and I had
wanted
him to call me in New York. And now he never would. Because he was dead. I teetered between heartbroken and numb thinking about that young man.
Who was dead.

So much death.
I couldn’t stop thinking about that. It just didn’t make any sense.

It was no use trying to nap so I looked out the window instead and watched as we descended over the southeast tip of Mexico, a green and purple and brown puzzle of land until, as we came closer, you could make out an abundance of palm trees. I had never been to Mexico before but could already see that it was rougher and wilder here than in Florida. And when I stepped out of the airport, after clearing customs, I learned that it was also hotter and muggier.

If Florida in January had been summer in June, this was sultry August. I dragged my suitcase into the blistering heat and was immediately confronted by a cluster of men wearing identical black slacks and white shirts.

“Taxi? Taxi?” each one chanted, hoping to score a customer.

One in particular seemed to try harder—“Taxi, lady? You need a ride? Where you going?”—so I chose him, or he chose me. I didn’t matter. I wanted out of this heat
and I wanted to find Mac
.

“Playa del Carmen.”

“Follow me.”

The man led me farther along the pavement into a parking lot and to a waiting car.

“You go,” he told me. Apparently he wasn’t the driver, but an agent of the driver. He walked briskly around to say something to the man behind the wheel, presumably giving him my destination.

“Thank you.” I handed him two American dollars. He nodded and returned to the fray.

I slid into the back of the blissfully air-conditioned car and repeated my destination: “Playa del Carmen, please.” He nodded and off we went.

I gazed past the back of the driver’s head at a heat-wavering landscape of burned grass and cartoonishly gigantic hotel entrances. The sea must have been to the left because nearly all the hotels were off in that direction. The Web site I’d consulted had said that Playa del Carmen was forty-two miles south of Cancun, a straight shot down Highway 307, which was the thoroughfare into the Riviera Maya, so I expected the trip to take around an hour.

The closer we got, the stronger my feelings became—if Mac was alive, if he was Dylan, I was on the path to him now. I could almost see him and almost feel him and almost smell him: the delicious scent of the pine soap he’d used when we first fell in love; the musky smell of sweat that last morning we were together in bed.

Fifteen minutes into the ride, the car exited off the highway, riveting my attention.

“We’re going to Playa del Carmen,” I reminded the driver.

He didn’t answer, just kept driving along a suddenly unpaved road that kicked up dirt the faster he drove.

“
Playa del Carmen
.” The name of the town was the same in English and Spanish, so what didn’t he understand?

As the highway vanished behind us, a cord of panic tightened inside me.

“Turn around!”

He jammed on the brakes and the car skidded, its back end spinning before coming all the way to a halt in a storm of dirt.

“
What the hell are you doing?
”

He twisted around and for the first time I saw his face.
That face.
And recognized him: the dark enraged eyes of the square-faced Mexican from the hotel elevator. The man who had seemed to threaten Ethan—
who probably killed him
.

Sweat dripped down his temples despite the frigidity of the air-conditioning. Only now did I realize that I was also sweating profusely.

“What do you want?” I tried to keep terror out of my voice. In cop school, they trained you to talk to the bad guy if you were caught in a tough situation, to
attempt negotiation
, because talking, sometimes, had a humanizing effect on them. It was a relief when it worked. And awful when it didn’t.

He shifted forward and I saw it on his collarbone: the dahlia tattoo. But before I could say or demand or beseech anything else, before I could make a plea for my life, his hand rose from behind the seat and showed me his gun.

My heart stopped.

He lurched forward and pressed the cold hard ring of the gun’s muzzle into the center of my forehead.

My brain stopped.

At impossibly close range I watched as the flesh on his finger fattened around the steel lick of the trigger.

I closed my eyes. And waited.

Part II

Chapter 9

I
came awake with a start, my face itchy yet strangely numb.

When I tried to scratch my cheek, I couldn’t.

My eyes refused to open.

Even my mouth was sealed shut.

An illogical sensation of well-being gave way to the steady ballooning of claustrophobia. And then a burst of panic as I realized I was hog-tied, bound and gagged, alone on my side in some kind of cave—the smell of damp and mold made me want to retch. But if I retched I would suffocate so I held back the almost irrepressible impulse.
Almost
. That was my loophole: If I mastered that one sliver of control, my ability to breathe through my nose, I might yet survive.

I had no idea where I was, other than someplace in Mexico in the vicinity of Cancun, or why the driver had put me here. All I knew was that I was still alive, which exceeded my expectations the moment I’d seen that gun. A moment I recalled now with crystal clarity: the pure fear of being confronted with senseless death by a stranger.

He hadn’t killed me, which told me something: He wasn’t his own boss. But that didn’t surprise me. He’d had the dahlia tattoo, just like Mac. Whoever they worked for wanted me alive. For now.

I had to get out of here
.

I pulled against my restraints. Rocked frantically on the dirt floor. It was airless and hot and the more I rocked, the more a slick coating of sweat accumulated on my skin. I tried to use it to slip out of the bindings but they were too tight, there was no give. After a few minutes of futile effort I lay back, to the extent that I could, and tried to breathe deeply.

Where was I?

With every breath I could feel mold spores lodge themselves in my lungs. As my mind raced:

Was it day? Night?

How long had I been here?

What had I stumbled into at the Hotel Collins?

Had Ethan, the pianist, been killed for talking to me?

What did someone not want me to know?

Who did someone not want me to find?

How did Mac fit into all this—or did he?

But the dahlia tattoos:
The killer had one, Mac had one.

So
yes
, he fit into it. Somehow.

But why kill Ethan?

Why abduct me?

And why keep me alive?

My brain whirred like a ruined hard drive unable to find a stopping place, building speed toward an inevitable crash. As if I believed I could think my way out of here, which I knew perfectly well I couldn’t.

The worst part of my mistake, my
tragic mistake,
was that if I didn’t make it out of here—and I wouldn’t; how could I?—if they killed me,
when
they killed me . . .

Ben would be an orphan
.

He had my mother, but she was old. Would she live long enough to raise him?

Jon and Andrea could raise him, along with their own children. Ben would be their bonus sibling . . . who would never know, or even remember, his real parents.

I couldn’t stop tears from filling my eyes and seeping into the blindfold. Soon my nasal passages were swelling, closing. And I learned something new and dreadful: that suffocation came upon you like a rising tide, a gradual overtaking, and it took a moment for you to understand that you were losing your final foothold. That the desire to survive and the ability to survive were not the same thing.

M
y head jerked backward and I felt a sharp stinging as the tape was yanked off my mouth. My jaw fell open reflexively as damp moldy air spilled into my lungs, triggering in my imagination the dawning of a blue sky like a curtain pulled aside to reveal a glorious day. As I was pushed forward and someone pulled at the knots binding my wrists behind my back, I became aware of a voice. A whisper.

“Quickly.”

A man. Who was he talking to? I waited but only one voice spoke.

The rope snaked off, inciting a rush of blood to my wrists. I tried to flex my fingers and move my hands but they were still numb. Next he untied my feet and it was just the same: a surge of warmth followed by numb tingling.

“Try moving.”

He was talking to me, not someone else. It was just the two of us here. Terror gushed through my blood, limbs, brain, waking me.

“Try getting up.”

He spoke English. Without a Spanish accent.
And I knew that voice
.

Shaking, I sat up and pulled off the blindfold. Sunlight from an open hatch above us seared my eyes. I blinked uncontrollably—and then saw him.

Tan, lean Dylan hovered over me, saying, “Quickly. Get up.”

My brain felt muddled. I shook my head, banishing cobwebs.

“Mac?”

“Hurry.”

“I’m so confused.”

“Come on, let’s go.” His tone was urgent and I started to move.

But first I needed an answer: Was he Mac, the man I had trusted, or Dylan, the doppelgänger I recognized but didn’t know?

“Who
are
you?”

He hoisted me onto my feet and maneuvered me up and out of the hatch, pushing me onto the ground outside before climbing out himself. It was a burning hot day and the sun was brilliant, blinding. As he kicked shut the hatch I realized I had been in an underground pit. Stowed away for later regardless of my chances for survival. Buried alive.

I breathed the fresh salty air that smelled of unfettered, delicious oxygen. A quick glance around told me that we were on an unpaved dead-end road that looked as if it had been carved out of Mayan wilderness: burned, untamed brush, towering palms, sand, and a hut cobbled together with planks of wood and topped with a thatched roof.

He grabbed my arm and tried to pull me toward a rusty white car.

“I don’t even know who you are!”

“Not now, Karin!” He ground his jaw in a way I had never seen him do before—
because this was Mac; I was sure now:
It was Mac
—and glanced behind him at the hut. Sweat poured off his tanned face. He was a stranger. And yet I
knew
him.

I wrenched my arm out of his grip. “Tell me what’s going on!”

He reached for me again, trying to hustle me forward. “
Not now
.”

“Yes
now
.”

“Listen to me—”

I reared back and slapped his face so hard my hand stung. The sound rang into the quiet like a shot. It felt liberating—
he was alive; he had left me
—and I slapped him again and stood there watching half his face turn red.

“I told myself if I found you I would kill you, but I didn’t really believe you were alive. I didn’t
believe
you would leave me—
us
. I loved you.”

“Karin—”

“You broke my heart!”

A gust of wind blasted sand into my eyes and stuck to my clammy skin. I turned and ran away from him—
from all of it
. There had to be a main road off this dead end. There had to be a way out.

I ran, aware of him running behind me, pleading, “Karin! What you’re doing is
dangerous
. We have to get in the car!”

His earnest tone compelled me to turn and look: He was gaining speed, determined to reach me. Behind him, a man stepped out of the hut, digging into his pocket for something. Before I could see what it was, Mac overtook me, lifted me over his shoulder, and rushed us both toward the car. He threw me into the back and jumped into the driver’s seat. Started the engine. Reversed and redirected in a hurry and drove fast along the narrow road.

Glancing behind us I saw that the man was talking on his cell phone. He wasn’t making a move to follow us, which worried me. He was calling someone. In moments the result of his call flew in our faces.

A car raced toward us, braking suddenly. Behind that car another sped to a stop.

Mac jumped out of the car, shouting, “Run!”

I leaped out and ran after him into the woods.

But there were four of them and two of us, and they had weapons—the incessant rapidity of the shots that chased us told me that at least one of them had an automatic rifle. Bullets pursued us through the woods, past acacias and mimosas and the striated trunks of palms, until Mac fell at the base of a giant cypress tree. The certainty that I couldn’t just leave him came over me with powerful force. How could I abandon him now, after following him this far? How many times could I watch him die and come back to life and die again?

“
Mac
.” I fell over him.

“I tripped.”

“You sure you weren’t shot?”

Behind us, footsteps skidded to a stop. Above us, triggers clicked. He could answer me yes or no but in a moment it wouldn’t matter: We would both be dead. I kissed him tenderly, and again more fiercely.

“Why did you leave me?”

He raised a trembling hand to my face. “They won’t kill us.”

“What’s happening?”

“I’m
sorry
, Karin. I made a terrible mistake.”

The men forced us to our feet before Mac could tell me what his terrible mistake had been. What could he possibly have done to land us both here, at gunpoint, in the Yucatan?

T
hey put Mac in one car, me in the other.

I sat in the back, with the man in the front passenger seat twisted to point his automatic rifle at me as a reminder that they had captured me, lest I forget. My mind ticked, my heart hammered, my eyes frantically searched beyond the windows of the moving car . . . driving along the wooded dirt road felt like freefall . . . nothing made any sense. The one thing I latched on to, the only thing that was really clear, was that they hadn’t killed us when they had the chance. This was a job. I was cargo someone had hired them to deliver.

“I’ll pay you whatever you want if you let me go,” I said. “More than you’re getting paid now. How much do you want? Dollars or pesos—name your price.”

The one holding the rifle on me glanced at the driver, who I realized was avoiding the highway, taking winding back roads that were paved randomly and then suddenly unpaved, rattling the car and us. His jet-black hair curled over a dense brown neck that remained still; he kept driving, looking forward, without any indication that he’d heard or understood me. Though I suspected he had and wasn’t budging. So if money wouldn’t work, maybe something else would.

“My name is Karin,” I said. “What are your names? Did you grow up around here? I’m from America, New Jersey, but now I live in New York City, in Brooklyn. Do you know anyone in Brooklyn?”

“Sunset Park,” the gunman said. “Cousin.”

“Shut up,” the driver said without turning to look at him.

The gunman’s eyes glazed and stuck to me like glue. When we entered a shantytown he kept his weapon on me in plain sight. My eyes darted along both sides of the road, waiting for someone to see us—the
turista
held hostage in the backseat—hoping someone would call the police. The gunman seemed to read my mind, to see that I not only hoped for help but expected it. He grinned and pushed the rifle a few inches closer to my face.

A man sitting on a plastic crate tipped his broken straw hat at the driver, who nodded back. A thin scabbed woman in dirty jeans and a Yankees T-shirt smiled and waved. The gunman waved the rifle in greeting. Two young children, twin boys with dirty faces, jumped up and down, gleefully calling
hola
when they saw our car.

And then we passed the one small building that wasn’t decrepit, a whitewashed stucco storefront with
La
Policia
painted in blue above the front window. The driver slowed down and an officer in uniform, leaning against the outside wall, watched us come and go without flinching. No
hola
s, no smiles, no waves; but it wasn’t necessary to underscore the implicit friendliness with which the cop observed our passing. He simply watched. In all my experiences as a police officer, a detective and a victim, this one ranked as the most surreal. Not just my captors and the townspeople but the police, too, were all under the same thumb. I knew, in that moment, that no one was going to help me.

Despite the heat—which seemed to grow denser the longer we drove through the seemingly endless village, this ramshackle collection of shacks—chills began to shiver through me. I ran my hands up and down my bare arms, trying to warm myself; and that was when I felt something hard on the inside of my left elbow. I turned my arm over and looked down at an angry sore that was half scab, half festering abscess. At its center was a puncturelike hole that looked raw and open, as if something had burrowed into my skin, dragging in a heap of infection. I spit into the palm of my opposite hand and tried to rub away the damage, erase the growing comprehension of how it got there.

I understood now: how time had slipped by in the hole; my itchy face; the cloudy almost-nice sensation that had given way to panic. The gang of thugs. I had never been a drug user and certainly had never taken heroin, but I had seen enough junkies in my time on the police force to spot one. I closed my eyes and held down an urge to throw up as the car slid off pavement and bumped along a dirt road.