Richard Montanari - The Devil_s Garden

Michael heard the man take a deep, slow breath. “This is not about money.”

Somehow, the words were even more chilling than Michael expected. “Then what is this about?”

More silence. Then, “You will know very soon.”

Something inside Michael flared red. Before he could stop himself he said, “Not good enough.”

He jammed shut the phone, instantly regretting what he had done. He opened it a second later, but the connection had been broken. It took every ounce of restraint within him not to smash the phone against the wall. He scanned the office frantically, trying to think of what do, how to act at such a moment. He knew that he would never get this minute back, and every wrong move he made at this moment could mean disaster, could mean the lives of his wife and daughters.

Go to the police, Michael.

Just go.

He grabbed his keys, headed for the door.

As he rounded the platform he saw a shadow cross the stairs below. Someone was blocking his way.

It all fell into place. It had been nagging his conscious thought for the past few minutes. Nick St Cyr had told him that Edgar Rollins amp; Son was really only one man, that Edgar Rollins’s son had been killed by a drunk driver in 2007, and the old man didn’t have the heart to take the name off the business. St Cyr had represented the old man in a lawsuit against the drunk driver.

The man who called himself “Bobby Rollins” was not a painter at all. He now stood in front of the door leading to the street. He had shed the painter’s overalls, removed his painter’s cap. He had also removed his latex glove.

He was now pointing a weapon at Michael’s head.

In his other hand was a cellphone. He handed the phone to Michael. For a moment, Michael couldn’t move. But the insanity of the moment soon propelled him forward. He took the phone from the young man, put it to his ear.

“His name is Kolya,” Aleks said. “He does not want to harm you, but will if I give him the order. His father was a corporal in the federal army, and a vicious man. A sociopath by all accounts. I have no reason to believe that the apple has fallen far from the tree. Do you understand this?”

Michael glanced at Kolya. The young man lowered the gun slightly, leaned against the door jamb. Michael took a deep breath. “Yes.”

“I am most pleased to hear this. And, if it puts to bed your fears for the moment, let me say that your wife and your adopted daughters are just fine, and they will remain that way, as long as you do what I say.”

Your adopted daughters, Michael thought.

“May I please speak to my wife?”

“No.”

Michael wondered what had happened to the real painter. He shuddered at the possibilities. He tried to calm himself, to tell himself that there was only one job: getting his family back.

“Are you ready to listen?” Aleksander Savisaar asked.

“Yes,” Michael said. “What do you want me to do?”

Sondra Arsenault stared at the television, an icy hand squeezing her heart. In the past twenty-four hours she had not eaten, had not left the house, except to get the mail, and even then she had all but run back to the front porch and slammed and locked the door, as if being chased by invisible demons. She had not slept a single minute. She had alternated between pots of black coffee, vitamins, scalding showers, and runs on the treadmill. She had taken her blood pressure a dozen times, each time registering a higher reading. She had cleaned the refrigerator. Twice.

Now, watching this news report, she realized her fears had not only been justified, but horribly understated. There was a good chance that, before the day was over, her world would end.

At six o’clock James walked through the door, his briefcase bulging at the seams, a pile of papers under his arm. As one of the newer teachers at Franklin Middle School he not only taught English but also a fourth-grade civics class, and served as the school’s soccer coach. In the past three months he had lost fifteen pounds from his already tall and lanky frame. At fifty-one, he was beginning to walk with an old man’s slouch.

James kissed Sondra on the top of her head – Sondra was nearly a foot shorter, and they had fallen into this routine years earlier – put his case and papers on the dining-room table, and crossed into the kitchen.

The kids were staying with Sondra’s mother in Mamaroneck for a few days, and the house was preternaturally quiet, a state made even more pronounced to Sondra by the savage beating of her heart. She could swear she heard her diastolic pressure rise and fall.

James reached into the cupboard over the stove, took down a bottle of Maker’s Mark. It had become a ritual for him. One drink before retiring to what passed for a den in their three-bedroom colonial. He would mark papers for an hour before dinner, catch up on his e-mail. If something unusual happened at school that day, this would be the ten-minute window in which he told his wife.

This was one of those days.

“You’re not going to believe what happened today,” James began. “One of the kids in my civics class, this big fourth-grader who thought it would be a good idea to bring a pair of chameleons to school -”

“I have something to tell you.”

James stopped pouring his drink, his shoulders sagging. All the dark possibilities of what might be coming his way danced across his face – an affair, a disease, a divorce, something happened to the kids. As long as Sondra had known him, he had never faced adversity well. He was a good husband, a great father, but a warrior he was not. It was Sondra who was always on point in every conflict they had faced as a couple, as a family. It was Sondra who stared down the dangers and misfortunes of their lives.

This was one of the reasons she had not said anything about what had happened. Now she had no choice.

“Is everything okay?” James asked, his voice trembling. “I mean, the kids… are the kids -?”

“They’re fine, James,” she said. “I’m fine.”

“Your mom?”

“She’s good. Everybody’s good.”

Sondra walked over to the sink, eyed the coffeemaker. She couldn’t have another cup. Her nerves were frayed as it was. Her veins felt like electrified copper wire. She began to make a pot anyway. She needed to do something with her hands.

As she circled an entry point to the story she had to tell her husband – a challenge that had run through her mind constantly for the past twenty-four hours – she considered how she had gotten to this moment.

The only child of Laotian immigrants, the cherished daughter of a celebrated mathematician and a forensic anthropologist, Sondra had grown up in the rarefied world of academia and applied science. Fall in New England, summer in North Carolina, at least three birthdays spent in Washington DC.

She met James at an all-nighter on the campus of Smith College, where he was one of the younger teaching assistants, and she was a grad student coasting to her MISW. At first she found him bookish and a little too passive, but after their third date she rooted out his charm, and found herself falling for this quiet young man from Wooster, Ohio. They married a year later, and although both would admit privately that their courtship and marriage did not burn with the heat of any grand passion, and that their inability to conceive was a source of sadness and disappointment, they both staked out, and claimed, contentment.

In the eighteenth year of their marriage, when they decided to adopt, the two little girls from Uzbekistan who bubbled into their lives caused a reaffirmation – perhaps even a true discovery – of love for each other. Life was good.

Until this moment.

James floated slowly over to the dinette table, pulled out a chair, drifted down to the seat, as if he were weightless. He had not yet taken a sip of his bourbon.