“You don’t have to take me to the doctor’s. I can get there on my own.”
“Have it your way.”
Storming out of the house.
The last time she saw her mother alive.
Jess jumped to her feet, raced toward the foyer, stumbling in the Jolly Jumpers, almost knocking them over, taking a few seconds to right them.
“I’m sorry, Jess,” Maureen was crying after her. “Please don’t go. I didn’t mean to say those things.”
“Why not?” Jess asked, stopping abruptly, turning toward
her sister, seeing her mother’s face. “They’re all true. Everything you said is true.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Maureen told her. “Whatever happened to our mother wasn’t your fault.”
Jess shook her head in disbelief. “How can you say that?” she asked. “If I’d taken her to the doctor’s like I promised, she would never have disappeared.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Of course I know that. And you know it too. If I had gone with her to the doctor’s, she’d still be here today.”
“Not if someone was stalking her,” her father said, crowding into the foyer, Barry by his side. “Not if someone was determined to do her harm. You know as well as I do that it’s next to impossible to stop someone if they’re really out to get you.”
Jess though immediately of Rick Ferguson.
The phone rang.
“I’ll get it,” Barry said, crossing into the living room. No one else moved.
“Why don’t we go back into the dining room and sit down?” Maureen offered.
“I really think I should leave,” Jess told her.
“We never talked about what happened,” Maureen said. “I mean, we talked about the facts; we talked about the details. But we never really talked about how we felt. I think we have a lot to talk about. Don’t you?”
“I want to,” Jess told her, her voice like a small child. “I just don’t think I can. Not tonight anyway. Maybe another day. I’m so tired. I just want to go home and crawl into bed.”
Barry appeared in the hallway. “It’s for you, Jess.”
“Me? But nobody knows I’m here.”
“Your ex-husband knows.”
“Don?” Jess vaguely recalled having told her ex-husband she was having dinner at her sister’s.
“He says it’s very important.”
“We’ll be in the dining room,” Maureen said, allowing Jess her privacy as she walked, trancelike, toward the phone.
“Has something happened?” she asked instead of hello. “Did Rick Ferguson confess?”
“Rick Ferguson is on his way to Los Angeles. I bought him a ticket and put him on the plane myself at seven o’clock this evening. It’s not Rick Ferguson I’m concerned about.”
“What are you concerned about?” Jess asked.
“Are you seeing Adam tonight?”
“Adam? No, he’s out of town.”
“Are you sure?”
“What do you mean, am I sure?”
“I want you to stay over at your sister’s house tonight.”
“What? Why? What are you talking about?”
“Jess, I had my office do some checking on this guy. They called the state bar. They’ve never heard of any lawyer named Adam Stohn.”
“What?”
“You heard me, Jess. They never heard of the guy. And if he lied to you about who he is and what he does, then there’s a good chance he’s lying about being out of town. Now, do me a favor, and stay over at your sister’s, at least for tonight.”
“I can’t do that,” Jess whispered, thinking of everything that had happened tonight, the things that had been said.
“Why not, for God’s sake?”
“I just can’t. Please, Don, don’t ask me to explain.”
“Then I’m coming over.”
“No! Please. I’m a big girl. I have to take care of myself.”
“You can start taking care of yourself when we know everything’s okay.”
“Everything
is
okay,” Jess told him, feeling numb from head to toe, as if she had been injected with an overdose of Novocaine. “Adam isn’t going to hurt me,” she mumbled, speaking away from the receiver.
“Did you say something?”
“I said not to worry,” Jess told him. “I’ll call you in the morning.”
“Jess …”
“I’ll speak to you tomorrow.” She hung up the phone.
Jess stood by the telephone for several seconds and tried to make sense of what Don had told her. No record of a lawyer named Adam Stohn? No one by that name registered to practice law in the state of Illinois? But why would he have lied? And did that make everything else he’d told her a lie as well? Was there nothing in her life that added up? Nothing that made any sense?
Jess stared at the bare Christmas tree waiting patiently for adornment, heard the quiet voices emanating from the dining room. “I think we have a lot to talk about,” her sister had said. And she was right. There was a lot that needed to be said, a lot that needed to be dealt with. Together and alone. Maybe she’d call Stephanie Banack on Monday morning, see if the therapist might consider seeing her again. She had to stop acting as her own judge and jury, she realized, creeping quietly into the foyer. It was time to let go of the suffocating guilt that had coated her for the past eight years, like a second skin.
Grabbing her purse but abandoning her coat in the hall closet, Jess silently opened the front door and stepped into the bitter night air. In the next instant, she was behind the wheel of her rented car, speeding south along Sheridan Road, tears streaming down her cheeks, music blasting from the radio, wanting only to crawl into her bed, pull the covers up over her head, and disappear until morning.
S
he was still crying when she arrived home.
“Stop crying,” she admonished herself, turning off the car’s ignition, silencing Mick Jagger’s misogynistic boasting. “Under my thumb,” he wailed in her mind as she raced through the cold toward her three-story brownstone. “What are you still crying about?” she asked herself, pushing her key into the lock, feeling the front door give way, locking it again securely behind her. “Just because you acted like a total idiot tonight, because you called your sister Donna Reed and your brother-in-law a pervert, because you made the impression of a lifetime on your father’s new girlfriend, because you snuck out of the house like a thief in the night, because Adam Stohn isn’t who he claims to be, because Rick Ferguson gets to go to California instead of the electric chair. … No,” she reminded herself, taking the stairs two at a time, “they don’t fry people in Illinois anymore. They put them to
sleep. Like dogs,” she added, mindful of the last line from Kafka’s
Trial
, crying even harder.
There were no trumpets or saxophones to accompany her up the final flight of stairs, no light creeping out from underneath Walt Fraser’s door. Probably away for the weekend, she thought, thinking that maybe she’d call Don when she got inside her apartment, suggest a few days in Union Pier. Forget about Adam Stohn. Or whoever the hell he really was.
She unlocked the door to her apartment and stepped over the threshold, allowing the silence and the darkness to draw her in, like old friends at a party warmly greeting the late arrival. No need anymore to leave the radio or the lights on all day. No more innocent, sweet melodies to welcome her home. She double-locked her door.
The streetlights filtered in through the antique ivory lace curtains, casting an eerie glow on the empty birdcage. She hadn’t had the courage to put it away, the will to consign it to the back of a closet, the strength to tote it down to the street, the good sense to give it to the Salvation Army. Poor Fred, she thought, giving in to a fresh onslaught of tears.
“Poor me,” she whispered, dropping her purse to the floor, slouching toward her bedroom.
He came at her from behind.
She didn’t see him, didn’t even hear him until the wire was around her throat and she was being rudely yanked backward into oblivion. Her hands automatically flew to her neck as she frantically sought to dig her fingers in between the wire and her flesh. The wire cut into her bandaged hand, and she felt the stickiness of fresh blood on her fingers, heard herself gagging, gasping for air. She couldn’t breathe. The wire was cutting off her supply of oxygen, slicing into the
flesh at her throat. She lost control of her legs, felt her toes being lifted off the floor. With everything in her, she fought to stay erect, to pull herself away from her attacker.
And then, somewhere inside the panic, she remembered—don’t pull away, don’t fight it, go with it. Use the image of circularity. If someone pulls you, rather than resist and pull back, use the attacker’s force to be pulled into his body. Strike when you get there.
She stopped fighting. She stopped resisting, although it went against every instinct she had. Instead, she allowed her body to go limp, felt her back cave in against her assailant’s chest as he pulled her toward him. Her neck throbbed in pain, like a giant pulse. For a terrifying instant, she thought it might be too late, that she was in danger of blacking out. She found the idea surprisingly seductive and was momentarily tempted to give in to the sensation. Why prolong what was clearly inevitable? Blackness was swirling around her. Why not dive into the thick of it? Why not simply disappear inside it forever?
But then suddenly, she was fighting back, fighting her way out of the darkness, using her assailant’s weight against him, allowing the force of her body to knock her attacker to the ground. She fell with him, her hands shooting wildly into the air, knocking against the side of the birdcage, sending it crashing to the floor. Her assailant yelled as he lost his balance, and she quickly used her feet to kick at his legs, her nails to scratch at his arms, her elbows to jab at his ribs.
She felt the wire around her throat loosen just enough for her to break free. She scrambled to her feet, gasping for breath, her body on fire, trying desperately to suck air into her lungs, almost collapsing with the effort. She felt the
indent of the wire still pressing into her throat, digging deeper into her flesh, as if it had become part of her, even though it was no longer there. She felt as if she were dangling from a hangman’s noose, as if, at any minute, her neck might snap.
Suddenly, she heard him moan, turned, saw his dazed, muscular form sprawled across the floor, took quick note of the black pointed-toed boots, the tight jeans, the dark T-shirt, the brown leather racing gloves covering his large hands, the long dirty blond hair that was whipped across the side of his face, hiding all but his twisted grin.
I am Death
, the grin said, even now.
I have come for you
.
Rick Ferguson.
A small cry escaped her throat. Had she actually thought he’d quietly board a plane to California and disappear from her life? Hadn’t this night been a foregone conclusion from the moment of their first confrontation several months ago?
A million images flooded her brain as she saw him struggling to regain his footing—eagle claws and zipper punches and hammer fists. Then she remembered—getting away comes first. Forget the heroics and the theatrics. Running away is what works most often for most women.
But Rick Ferguson was already on his feet, lumbering toward her, blocking her way to the front door. Scream, her inner voice commanded. Yell, goddamn you! Roar!
“Hohh!”
she cried, watching him flinch, momentarily startled by the sound.
“Hohh!”
she yelled again, even louder the second time, thinking of the gun that lay in the drawer of the end table, beside her bed, wondering if she could get to it, her eyes scanning the dark room for whatever weapon was at hand.
If anything, her outburst seemed to bring him new life. Rick Ferguson’s evil grin burst into an outright laugh. “I like a good fight,” he said.
“Stay away from me,” Jess warned.
“Connie wasn’t much of a challenge. She just kind of crumpled up and died. No fun at all. Not like you,” he told her. “Killing you is gonna be a pure pleasure.”
“Likewise, I’m sure,” Jess said, lunging to the floor and scooping the empty birdcage into her hands, hurling it at Rick Ferguson’s head, watching it connect, seeing a thick line of blood race down his cheek from the gash in his forehead. She turned on her heels and ran from the room, her thoughts scrambling to catch up.
Where was she going? What was she going to do when she got there?
Her bedroom had never seemed so far away. She tore through the hall, hearing him only steps behind her. She had to get her gun. She had to get her gun before he was able to lay his hands on her again. She had to use it.
She threw herself at the small end table beside her bed, pulling open the top drawer, her desperate fingers searching for her gun. It wasn’t there. “Goddamnit, where are you?” she cried, throwing the contents of the drawer to the floor.
The mattress! she thought, falling to her knees, reaching under the mattress, though she distinctly remembered Don insisting she not keep it there. Still, what if she was mistaken? What if she hadn’t moved it after all?
It wasn’t there. Goddamnit, it wasn’t there!
“Looking for this?” Rick Ferguson stood in the doorway, dangling the revolver from the end of his gloved fingers.
Jess rose slowly to her feet, her knees knocking painfully together, as he aimed the gun directly at her head. Her heart was pounding wildly; her ears were ringing; tears were falling the length of her cheeks. If only she could hear her thoughts together; if only she could stop them from careening around, directionless, inside her brain, hammering on the inside of her skull, as if they were trying to escape; if she could only stop her legs from shaking. …
“Nice of you to invite me into your bedroom,” he said, moving slowly toward her. “Of course, I already know where you keep your panties.”
“Get the hell out of here,” Jess yelled, recalling her torn panties, seeing the blood from her neck smeared across the white of her duvet.
He laughed. “You sure are a feisty little thing, aren’t you? Yeah, I gotta say I admire your nerve. Telling a man with a loaded gun to get the hell out. That’s real cute. I suppose now you’re gonna tell me I’ll never get away with this.”
“You won’t.”
“Sure I will. Don’t forget, I’ve got a very good lawyer.”