Brian Garfield - Necessity

When she passed the kitchen door she saw Philip Quirini emptying the dishwasher.

The nursery had been a second guest bedroom before Ellen’s birth. Now it was brightly wallpapered and stuffed toys were strewn everywhere on the floor and in the crib.

Marjorie was with the baby, feeding her with upended bottle.

Don’t hesitate. Look natural. Come on.

She swept right in. “I’ll do that.”

Marjorie surrendered the baby and the formula without remark and retreated into the corner with arms folded.

Cradling the baby, cooing while Ellen sucked at the nipple, she went out the nursery door with her pulse pounding so heavily it poured little black waves across her vision.

Past the kitchen door. Philip putting cups away on their hooks. Don’t go straight down the hall now; might make them suspicious. Go into the living room. Keep talking to the baby. Make it seem aimless-a random wandering through the apartment.

The glasses, half full with the ice mostly melted in them, remained on the bar from Jack Sertic’s visit. She carried the baby to the window and looked down at the avenue. Nothing remarkable down there: traffic crawling uptown in its usual afternoon snarl.

The subway was the best bet at this hour. There was an entrance just a block uptown on Lexington. She’d already decided that; she knew precisely where she’d go with the baby-down the Lexington Avenue line to Grand Central Station, change for the crosstown shuttle, get off at Eighth Avenue, walk two blocks to a car rental agency and hope they had something immediately available. If not, walk straight down the street into the Port Authority bus terminal and catch a bus to any town across the river in Jersey where they rented cars.

Speed was the trick. Get out of Manhattan; get into a car. After that there’d be time to breathe, time to find an open supermarket, time to study maps. But first she had to get the baby out of this apartment.

She carried Ellen to the front hall closet. The bottle wasn’t empty but the baby must have sensed her distress. Probably felt the bashing of her heartbeat. Ellen spurned the nipple and began to cry.

She put the bottle down on the hall table, hooked her handbag over her wrist and reached into the closet: folded the leather jacket over her forearm and picked up the suitcase, cradling the wailing baby in one arm, and turned to struggle with the deadbolt on the front door.

A torrent of adrenaline slammed through her; her palsied hand was barely able to turn the knob.

When Philip Quirini cleared his throat she nearly dropped the baby.

Perhaps it was the tone of the baby’s yelling; perhaps something else. Whatever it had been, she was caught. The Quirinis, husband and wife, came down the hall with carefully expressionless faces, their eyes taking in everything: the suitcase, the baby, the half-open apartment door.

Philip Quirini said very politely, “Let me give you a hand with that suitcase, Mrs. LaCasse.”

Marjorie contrived a sliver of a smile. “I’ll take the baby for you now.”

He had his hand on the edge of the door, blocking her exit; Marjorie was reaching for Ellen. Over the infant’s howls Marjorie said, “The baby’s not supposed to go out in this weather”-what weather? It was a normal day for early summer-and she saw Marjorie’s glance fall upon the suitcase again and saw the determined set of Marjorie’s jaw under the polite cool subservient smile and she knew it was no good: she couldn’t get away with the baby but neither could she turn back now because within two minutes Bert would be told what she’d tried to do and her next stop, and last one, would be commitment to that rubber room.

No choice. None at all.

She surrendered the baby. “Tell my husband I’ll be away for a few days. Tell him not to worry.” And picked up the suitcase and took it with the jacket through the door. They didn’t move to stop her. That wasn’t included in their instructions. They only smiled and she watched the door swing shut, cutting off her view of the baby.

She could still hear Ellen’s yowling when she crossed the vestibule and put her key in the switch that summoned the elevator. The sound dwindled as the baby was carried away toward the nursery.

Would they awaken Bert right away?

Probably.

Chances were she only had a minute or two to get away. Where was the damned elevator?

What else could I have done? There must have been something. Can I go back now and get her? Isn’t there some way?

She scrambled feverishly amid the labyrinth of visions. But all of them were dead ends.

She heard the elevator mechanism. At least it was moving. But where was the car?

Back in the apartment she thought she heard a door slam.

My God. Come on!

Nothing to do but run for it. Hide. Set up a nest somewhere safe. Then come back when he’s no longer expecting it and take the baby away from him.

Footsteps in the apartment. Pounding hard on the carpet. Coming forward. Bert’s stride.

The car arrived; the doors slid open. She kicked the suitcase into the elevator, swung inside, jabbed her key into the slot.

The doors were closing and she just had a glimpse of Bert as he came plunging out of the apartment. He was stretching forward, trying to claw at the closing doors, but they came together before his hand reached them.

The car lurched and began to slide downward.

She wept and wept and wept.

All the way up the seventeen miles of one-lane blacktop she’s tense and rigid at the wheel. If you get trapped on this road-if Bert’s decided to come up a day early this week or if one of them is driving toward you from the house right now and recognizes you …

She remembers evenings on this road when you had to stop and wait for the deer to finish bounding across the road-counting them as they leaped: five, six, seven. One time, with Ellen hardly ten weeks old in her arms, she counted out twelve of them.

A car coming forward: she glimpses a glitter of sun reflection as it moves toward her beyond a bend in the trees.

Oh Jesus. If it’s one of ours …

Every quarter mile or so there’s a pullout to allow oncoming traffic to pass. This one happens to be on her left as she approaches it; that’s good in this case because it will put her on the far side of the vehicle-harder for the oncoming driver to see clearly; and her door opens directly onto the woods in case she’s forced to duck and run.

It comes in sight-a white Lincoln, muddy and bug-spattered. She pulls her head back into the shadows of the cab and peers through her sunglasses. The driver of the car-quick glimpse of a black man in a grey windbreaker-waves his thanks and drives by. The car has M.D. plates.

A doctor? No one she’s ever seen before. Possibly from one of the other houses along the road.

Sweating, she drives on.

The gate is shut of course; it’s always shut-a forbidding grillwork of steel appended to stone gateposts amid no-nonsense signs: Private and No Trespassing and Beware of Dogs.

Her palms are damp and she sits taut for a moment, gulping breaths, remembering how she never used to pay much attention to the gate; she always had one of those remote-control transmitter gizmos in the car-you just pressed it and the gate rolled open and you drove through it and it slid shut behind you with a silent assurance that made you feel safe.

She doesn’t even remember which side the lock is on. Getting out of the Jeep she examines the left-hand gatepost, sees nothing on its mortared fieldstones, and crosses to the right-hand post.

There’s the lock. A small brass plate; a keyhole into the mortar.

She’s had these keys for three years. Certainly after she disappeared from the New York apartment two and a half months ago he would have changed all the locks there. But has he bothered to change them here as well?