John Saul - Perfect Nightmare

Before he knew it, that martini was gone and another was in its place.

This wasn’t good. If he didn’t leave now, the last train would be gone, and there would be no choice but to spend the night in the apartment by himself.

When Russ Doran ordered still another round, Steve said nothing, and slowly the alcohol began to numb him. And then, in the middle of the fifth martini, Russ pointed up at the television screen above the bar.

“Look at that,” he said softly, then frowned at Steve. “Shouldn’t you be there?”

Steve looked up to see Lindsay’s photograph splashed across the television screen, and a moment later the camera pulling back to show a great mass of people, each of them holding a candle, walking slowly down a street in Camden Green.

Kara.

Dawn D'Angelo.

The cheerleading coach — what was her name? Spandler.

And all his friends and neighbors, plus at least half the rest of the town.

And he’d completely forgotten that the vigil was tonight.

He stood up so fast he almost tipped over his stool. He fumbled in his wallet and threw a couple of twenties down.

“Gotta go, Russ. See you tomorrow.”

“Whoa, wait a minute,” Russ said, grabbing onto his wrist. “Are you going to drive ?”

“I’ve got to get home,” Steve said, and gently but firmly pulled away from Russ’s grasp.

Five minutes later he was in the Hertz office on West Fifty-seventh Street, and ten minutes after that he was on the road.

Maybe — just maybe — he could get there before it was over.

Kara stood in her kitchen, closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of talking, laughing, eating, and drinking.

The sounds of life.

The sounds of normality.

The sounds she hadn’t heard since Lindsay vanished.

And the sounds that Steve should be hearing but wasn’t.

A flicker of anger ignited inside her; a flicker she instantly doused, reminding herself that Steve was dealing with the situation the only way he could, that she couldn’t help him, and neither, she suspected, could any of the people who had gathered here tonight. But it still would have been better for him to be here.

But he wasn’t.

She opened her eyes to see the roomful of friends — and people who until tonight had only been acquaintances — and suddenly, gratitude replaced the fear that had all but overwhelmed her; calm replaced the frenetic anxiety that had gripped her since the moment of Lindsay’s disappearance. If only Steve were with her…

Steve gripped the steering wheel and hunched forward in the driver’s seat of the tiny rented Hyundai, his frustration growing by the second. He needed to get home, and he needed to get home now. But traffic wasn’t moving.

Someone who must have found his driver’s license in a Cracker Jack box was holding everything up on the on ramp to the Sagtikos Parkway — maybe he should have just taken 25A all the way and not even bothered with the Long Island Expressway. But this time of night the expressway should have been clear, and he’d figured—

Who cared what he’d figured?

He pounded the horn, then cut around to the on-ramp shoulder, right of the lane of stalled traffic. Sure enough, at the top was an old man afraid to merge into the lane of northbound traffic.

Steve gunned the little car and darted from the shoulder into traffic.

But traffic was even worse when the Sagtikos turned into the Sunken Meadow above Northern State Parkway. It seemed as if every oversized SUV on Long Island was trying to get to Camden Green tonight, and Steve took a fresh grip on the steering wheel, bore down on the gas pedal, and swerved into a gap between two huge vehicles, each occupied only by a driver. One way or another, he was going to get home to Kara.

What had he been thinking, going out drinking with Russ while Kara walked in the vigil by herself?

He slipped between two more SUVs and hit the horn as he passed yet another one on the right, then veered back into the left lane and hit the accelerator as he saw the highway finally open up ahead of him.

Finally free — at least for a minute or two — he fumbled in his coat pocket until he found his cell phone and flipped it open. With one hand on the wheel, he punched the thumb of his other hand on the speed-dial key for his home number.

Raindrops began to splat on the windshield.

Where was the wiper control?

Just as Kara answered, a town car came out of nowhere and passed Steve on the right, sending a cascade of mist over his windshield, blinding him for a second.

Where the hell were the wipers?

“Hello?” Kara’s voice crackled in his ear.

“Kara?”

“Steve?” Though the crackle was momentarily gone, her voice was now muffled by voices in the background. “Honey? Where are you?”

“I’m on my way home,” he said, raising his voice against the cacophony of the rain on the roof of the car and the crackling in the cell connection. Holding the steering wheel with his knees, he twisted a switch on one of the stalks protruding from the steering column.

The headlights went out, and Steve swore under his breath as he tried to switch them back on.

“Honey?” he heard Kara say, her own voice now rising, too. “I can’t hear you. You’re breaking up. Are you driving?”

“I’m on my way home,” he said.

The rain turned into a pelting downpour, and every light beyond the windshield turned into a dazzling blur.

“Steve?”

The last of the alcohol from the martinis he’d consumed surged into Steve’s bloodstream, and along with the alcohol came a wave of guilt. “Kara, I missed the vigil,” he said, his words slurring. “I’m sorry, honey, I’m so sorry—”

“Steve? You’re breaking up — I can’t understand you!”

As a Humvee suddenly loomed out of the darkness ahead on the right, the phone fell from Steve’s hand and dropped to the floor between the front seats. Instinctively reaching for it, Steve missed the beginning of the Humvee’s movement into his own lane, and by the time he looked up again, red lights were flooding his windshield.

His headlights! He’d never turned them back on!

Jerking the steering wheel and slamming on the brakes, he felt the car start to the left out of the oversized car’s path, and for an instant thought he was safe.

And in that instant, the tires lost their grip on the rain-slicked highway. The car spun out of control, hit the concrete divider, and flipped into the air.

In a moment of terrible clarity, Steve hoped Kara wouldn’t be able to hear what was coming next.

Then his windshield exploded as the car slammed against the support columns of an overpass and dropped to the ground upside down, its roof collapsing. Steve felt a terrible pain in his spine, and an instant later was surrounded by a dazzling white light—

And another instant later, the light, too, was gone.

When the phone went dead, Kara moved into the laundry room, away from distraction and noise that only a moment ago had sounded so good to her and tried to call Steve back.

She got nothing more than his voice mail.

Maybe he was trying to call her again.

She hung up, waited almost a full minute, and tried again.

And again she got his voice mail.

Questions churned through her mind. Why was Steve driving home this late? And what would he be driving, anyway? He’d taken the train to work.

Maybe he caught a ride with someone else?

She set the cordless phone down on the washing machine and tried to sort out the pieces of words she’d heard him speak. She thought he’d been trying to apologize.

But there was something in his voice, even through the static…