Jonathan Nasaw - Fear itself

“FBI,” he called.

She was either unconvinced or frozen with fear.

“Please, I think she’s stopped breathing.”

That brought her out of it. Leaving the phone off the hook, Nurse Apple bustled over to help Pender roll Missy off him. He staggered to his feet, cradling his injured arm. There was no time to break anything gently. Letting the arm dangle-fuck, that hurt-he pulled his wallet out of his hip pocket with his left hand, flipped it open to show her his badge.

“Pender, FBI. Simon Childs is a serial killer. There may be another victim still alive in the house-when the police get here, tell them I’ve gone after him.”

Nurse Apple was already bending over Missy, preparing to begin CPR-she waved him away impatiently, half-listening. Then it dawned on her: serial killer, gone after him. “No, don’t-”

Too late-he was gone. “No more private gigs,” she muttered, turning back to her patient. Pender, FBI, had just bugged out, leaving her alone with a serial killer who ran around bashing people with frying pans. “This time I mean it.”

Dorie’s hope died with the battery that had powered the night-vision goggles; along with hope went courage; along with courage went the last of her strength. Wet, naked, thoroughly disoriented, she threw the goggles aside and sank down onto her haunches, shivering as much from despair as from the cold.

Sooner or later, she told herself, Simon would come looking for her. It wouldn’t take him long to figure out that she’d unscrewed the lightbulbs-after that it would only be a matter of time. She remembered how peaceful she’d felt in that warm tub, how easy drowning had seemed back then. Now the universe had turned so ugly that she no longer believed in the light at the end of the tunnel-in any light, for that matter. Part of her wanted to go primal, to howl and tear out her hair, but she was too tired and beaten even for silent grieving.

Never mind, she thought, leaning her bare back against the cold concrete wall-let him come. But even that weak note of defiance deserted her when she heard footsteps descending the wooden stairs; she covered her ears with her hands to block out the sound and shut her eyes against the sudden brightness of the flashlight beam shining down on her from above.

And that was how Pender found her, squatting against the wall in the far corner of what had once been Grandfather Childs’s wine cellar, her hands pressed tightly over her ears.

“Dorie,” he said gently, then, louder: “Dorie, it’s Ed Pender.”

When there was still no response, he sat down beside her and waited. After thirty seconds or so she opened her eyes. “It is you,” she said. “I was afraid maybe I was dreaming.”

“I know what you mean,” said Pender. “I know exactly what you mean.”

Simon Childs was no fool. He’d always understood that the fear game was inherently risky and, moreover, that the risk was potentially fatal, not because California was a death-penalty state, but because for Simon, imprisonment was simply not an option. For years he’d kept the huge leather satchel he called his getaway bag packed and ready, stuffed with cash, drugs, prescription and otherwise, fake ID and credit cards, and in the event it all went south, a little blue capsule that, Zap Strum had assured him, was the same formulation issued by the CIA to its operatives. Just bite down, Zap promised Simon-an instantaneous death is guaranteed.

“What’s in it?” he’d asked.

“Dunno.”

“Will it be painless?”

“Hard to say: nobody who’s actually taken one has ever lived long enough to tell anybody.”

Despite Simon’s precautions, it wasn’t until he was in the Mercedes, driving north on Grizzly Rock with the satchel beside him on the passenger’s seat and what seemed like every emergency vehicle in Alameda County passing him in the opposite direction, lights flashing and sirens blaring, that it began to sink in: this is actually happening, buckaroo-this is Plan B for real.

But not Plan B as he’d envisioned it. It was all happening too fast. Forget Mexico-they’d have a description of the Mercedes out before he made it to South San Francisco, much less south of the border. Which meant he had to get it off the road pronto. But where? And then what? And what about-

No. He couldn’t allow himself to start thinking about Missy just yet. He felt so guilty about leaving her. Not that Pender had left him with any choice. Hiding behind her like that-what a coward. And of course if Pender hadn’t taken advantage of Missy’s disability by tricking her into letting him into the house, where he had no right to be, or if Pender hadn’t stuck his nose in where it didn’t belong in the first place…

Pender, Pender, Pender-it all came down to Pender, didn’t it?

For Simon, it was a calming revelation, even comforting somehow; he turned his attention back to his more immediate concern: getting this red-hot, highly conspicuous car off the road as soon as possible.

According to the Farmer’s Almanac, which Nelson Carpenter consulted every morning of his life, adjusting as always for a latitude of 37°50’ and allowing for daylight saving time, which still had another week to run, the sun would be setting at 6:23 P.M. on Friday, October 22.

Nelson, once known as Nervous Nellie (a sobriquet that, given his first name, the cruelty of children, and the severity of his polyphobia, was probably inevitable), needed at least an hour to complete his preparations for nightfall. It wasn’t a large house, just a standard suburban colonial in Concord, California, the kind of place where horror movies (at least the horror movies Nelson and his former best friend Simon had been addicted to as adolescents) were never set, but still it took time to ready it for darkness. There were lights to be turned on (two in every room, in case a bulb burned out in one), blinds and curtains to be drawn, doors and windows to be locked. He also had to inspect and lock every closet, then look under every bed and examine every corner of the house where an intruder might conceivably be hiding, both before and after all entrances had been secured.

So as soon as Nelson’s watch went off at 4:00 to remind him to watch Oprah, he reset the alarm for 5:23 and eagerly turned on the television. Phobias were the theme of today’s show; it was Dr. Phil’s contention that whatever the specific phobia, all phobics were afraid of the same thing: loss of control.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” muttered Nelson. Just then the front doorbell rang, throwing him into an agony of indecision. There was no chance he’d be opening the door, of course-he didn’t have many friends, but the few he did have would have known better than to show up at his doorstep without calling first. Nelson’s dilemma, rather, was whether to get up and look through the Securit-Eye peephole or simply hole up in the living room with Dr. Phil and wait for whoever it was to go away.

Both options had their downsides. On the one hand, the prospect of peering through the peephole at an unannounced visitor was an intimidating one for a man with as overactive an imagination as Nelson Carpenter’s. On the other hand, it might be important-a police officer going door to door to warn residents about a chemical spill or an escaped convict, for instance. But on the other, other hand, it might be the convict himself.

Nelson understood from years of behavioral therapy that what he needed to do at this point was evaluate the prospective threats. It was probably only a Witness or a kid selling magazine subscriptions-in which case there was nothing to be afraid of. And of the other possibilities, the prospect of a toxic cloud from a refinery fire was more realistic than the possibility of finding an escaped convict on the doorstep.