Lisa Miscione - Twice

He could still see Lydia in the foyer trying to negotiate her way in, though only ten minutes remained for visiting hours. He was not surprised when he saw the guard relent and let her through. He wondered what she’d said to get her way.

When his cell phone sang inside his pocket, he had a feeling he knew who it was. He hadn’t forgotten Rain’s deadline, and he was sure Rain hadn’t forgotten, either. With Rebecca missing now, the stakes were even higher.

“ Dax -ie,” said the husky voice on the other line. “How are you, darling ?”

Danielle’s voice was slurred and sloppy. There was a desperation to her mock-seductive tone. She was making Dax more and more uncomfortable every time they spoke. He could see that she had entered the downward spiral of booze, drugs, and dangerous sex that would likely end with her dead in an alley somewhere. He didn’t want to feel badly about that when it happened. He needed to find a new street contact, someone not so high-risk, someone with better self-preservation instincts.

“What have you got, Danielle?” he said, trying to keep the disgust out of his voice.

“Can you come get me? I’m cold and hungry and I have some news for you,” she said in a singsong voice that she must have imagined was enticing.

“Give me the news now and I’ll come get you later. A woman is missing and I don’t have time to play games with you.”

There was a pause on the other line. And when Danielle spoke again, her voice had turned sharp and angry.

“Well, fuck you, too, Daxie .” She hung up the phone with a loud slam. Dax just sat there, knowing she would call back in under a minute. She was jonesing and she needed him. The phone chirped and blinked in his hand.

“Let’s try to be civilized, shall we?” he said as he answered.

“Come get me right now or I’m not going to give you Rain’s message,” she said, now pouting and sullen like a child. “I mean it, Dax.”

Again the stab of pity in his heart for her. “Okay, okay. I’ll be there. Where are you?”

She gave him her location and he hung up the line. “Bloody hell,” he said, looking back at the glass doors through which Lydia had disappeared. He dialed Jeff’s number and got voice mail, but didn’t leave a message.

As he put the phone back in his pocket, Ford McKirdy’s Taurus pulled up beside him and Dax rolled down the window. Ford got out of his car and walked over. Fatigue and stress radiated off him like an odor.

“Did you hear?” asked Ford.

“Hear what?”

“We found a body in Central Park that matches the description of Rebecca Helms.”

“Christ,” he said, feeling a wave of anger and sadness.

“I know,” said Ford with a slow shake of his head.

“Listen,” said Dax after a moment. “I have to go. I’ll meet up with you two in Haunted. Ford, just watch out for Lydia. I’ll be right behind you.”

He didn’t like leaving Lydia, especially since Ford had another agenda. But if Danielle had a line on Jed McIntyre, it couldn’t wait. McIntyre had killed Rebecca and was moving closer to Lydia and Jeffrey. Dax could feel it, could smell it like a scent on the wind.

“Where are you going?” called Ford. But the Rover was already pulling down the street.

Julian Ross looked like one of the tortured figures in her paintings. She stood in the corner, huddled there as if protecting herself against some imagined assault. She had a white-knuckled grip on one of the room’s orange plastic chairs, as if she might need to lift it and use it to ward off lions. Some of her color had returned, but her wild eyes spoke of a living nightmare. Her fear and confusion were palpable in the stale air of the room. Her hair looked grayer and she looked thinner than when Lydia had seen her last. So much had happened since then that it seemed like a month, but really it had been less than a week.

“They won’t let me have any paper or paints,” Julian said as the door closed behind Lydia. “I’m losing my mind in this place.”

She laughed a little then at what she’d said. But then her face was a mask of sadness. “Are you going to help me? Or are you one of them?”

“One of who?”

“You know,” said Julian with a sly smile and eyes that tried to bore into Lydia.

“I really don’t know, Julian. But tell me and I’ll try to help you.”

Lydia seated herself in a chair by the wall, telling herself that a passive body posture would put Julian at ease. But really, she was just exhausted. Before she sat, she gave Julian an up and down, figured she had about thirty pounds on Julian and could definitely ward off an attack if it came to that. She felt comforted by that thought until it occurred to her that Tad Jenson and Richard Stratton probably would have thought the same thing.

She felt like she had used up every ounce of energy she had just by walking from the car to Julian’s room. She wondered briefly if she should have listened to Jeffrey after all. She found herself wondering that a lot.

Julian was watching her carefully. “The destroyers, the takers, the damned,” she whispered. “You’re not one of them. I can tell.”

Lydia’s mind was racing with a thousand questions, but Julian was skittish and jumpy; Lydia knew she had to be careful with words, careful not to frighten or upset Julian any more than she was or she ran the risk of losing her altogether. Julian finally released the chair and came around to sit in it, facing Lydia. She balanced on the edge, bouncing her knees up and down so quickly that she seemed to be trembling.

“The destroyers…” Lydia said, her tone leading.

“You know them?”

“Who doesn’t?” she said, thinking of the forces that threatened to rip her own life apart at the seams.

Julian nodded solemnly. “All my life, they’ve been in the shadows, waiting to snatch away my soul, my life… everything. For a time, I thought I had eluded them. I should have known.”

She thought about Julian’s canvases, the small figures always in peril from the larger, dark, amorphous forms. She thought of the violence that Julian Ross had grown famous for painting. She wondered again whether Julian’s demons were real or imagined.

“Why do they want to hurt you, Julian?”

“That’s just it, you see. I have no idea,” she said with a helpless shrug. Big tears filled her eyes and rolled down her cheeks; she made no sound, no move to wipe the moisture from her face. If she was an actress, she had real talent. Lydia felt a twinge of pity in her heart.

A sharp knock at the door startled them both. “Five minutes, Ms. Strong,” said the guard from outside.

“You called me here, Julian. You said you wanted to talk.”

Julian looked at Lydia closely, her eyes narrowing. Lydia observed her face, sought traces of Eleanor’s cold and deceptive aura in the woman’s daughter and saw none of it. The two woman sat looking at each other in silence, precious seconds passing. But Lydia didn’t speak, sensing that Julian would only talk when she was ready.

“I am complicit in my own fate and in the fate of those I have loved. I see that now,” she said finally, speaking slowly, seeming more lucid for a moment. “We all are, you know. Other people, other forces may direct the orchestra, but each of us has the choice to pick up the violin and play or not. I have played along all my life. Out of fear, out of need to please, out of something-who knows really why? Somehow you feel if you don’t play the music that’s written for you, then you’re guilty of the chaos that ensues. None of the other players know how to proceed. It’s so frightening for everyone.”

Lydia had no idea what she was trying to say, but again she let silence do the coaxing.