Joe Schreiber - Chasing the dead

"She's very good with strangers," he observes, almost mildly.

Sue forces herself to stop crying, bites her lip, balls her left hand into a fist, and mashes it to her mouth. "Anything," she says finally. She can taste blood mixed with tears and her lip aches faintly from biting it. Her chest, her face, her throat all ache. "Anything you want. Just please, don't hurt her."

"I told you, we'll get to that. You passed the first test, Susan, but I just need to be absolutely sure that I can trust you not to call the police."

"I won't. I swear."

No answer.

"You want money," she says. "I can give you however much you want. Just name your price."

"You're not listening to me."Abruptly the voice has taken a nasty turn. "I'm assuming that you're smart, Susan, but right now you're losing IQ points by the second. Now, if you want to see your daughter alive, then shut up and listen." He doesn't wait for any acknowledgment beyond her silence. "All right. Are you ready to listen and do what I tell you?"

"Yes."

"Good. You're going to go outside and get in your car. I'm giving you ten seconds to get out there. Are you ready?"

"Yes."

"Go."

He hangs up and she drops the cordless, pivots, and bolts out of the kitchen and down the hall in her stocking feet, jumping out the front door and down the driveway. The darkness and cold against her skin don't even register. The door latch on the Expedition catches the first time and she jerks it again, jumps behind the wheel, and grabs the car phone, which is already ringing. Like the radio it is designed to carry a residual charge allowing for its use even when the motor isn't running.

"I'm here," she says.

"Start the engine."

Sue gropes instinctively for the ignition and finds nothing but air. The keys aren't there. Of course they aren't. She brought them into the house with her and dropped them on the counter right before taking off her shoes. She feels a cramp of dread and improbable embarrassment. "I didn't bring my keys."

"Susan, shame on you. You used to drive an ambulance for a living, how could you forget yourkeys?"

"How do you know that?"

He ignores her. "I guess you don't have to be rich for very long before you start forgetting all the practicalities of daily living, isn't that right?"

She doesn't answer. What's she supposed to say?

"That's all right, Susan. I'll give you another chance. I'm a big believer in second chances. What about you? Doyou believe in second chances?"

"Yes."

"Good. Right now I just need you to sit here like a good girl. Can you do that for me?"

"Yes," she says, and for the first time, sitting out in the darkness of the Expedition, which is still warm and smells like the steamed lobsters she left out here by accident, she thinks that the voice on the phone is familiar somehow, from a long time ago. She does not know where or when-her mind will not grant her access to that information-but the familiarity nags just the same, and she thinks again about the idea of voices in her head.

"I'm holding a knife in my right hand," the voice says casually. "It's a hunting knife, one of my favorites. I've had it for many years, but it's still fairly new and in excellent shape. It's stainless steel with a nine-inch blade. It's terribly sharp."

Sue hears herself trying not to make a sound. She makes one anyway, an awful-sounding groan. If he hears this on his end, he doesn't comment.

"Now I'm going to make another promise. In exactly twelve hours, I'm going to plant this knife in little Veda's throat. The police will never find her body and you will never see her again, but for the rest of your life you will know exactly how she died, and her blood will be on your hands. And how will you know that?"

Sue waits, not getting it. Then she understands. "Because," she says, "because you always keep your promises?"

"That's right, Susan! You remembered that! That's very good!" She can almost hear the grin in his voice. "There's hope for you yet, I think. Now, as I said, the only way that this isn't going to happen is if you do exactly what I tell you. The choice is yours, but I'm going to suggest that you don't waste any more time bargaining with me or offering me money. And I especially don't want to hear any more pointless questions. I'll give you all the information you need. That means all you have to do is listen to what I tell you and do what I want. Do you understand?"

"Yes," she says. "Yes, yes."

"Good. You're going to go back into the house and get your jacket and boots. Get a pair of gloves, a flashlight, and a shovel-the one from the garden shed, not the snow shovel. Are you getting all this, Susan?"

"How do you know about…?" She stops, catching herself. Then it hits her. Has he actually been inside her house?

"Get the nylon rope from the hook in the garage, and the canvas folded up in the shed. Take all of it and put it in the back of the Expedition. I'm going to call again in three minutes. If you're not back behind the wheel in time with everything you need, you'll miss my call and you'll never hear from me or little Veda again. You don't want that to happen, do you?"

"That's not enough time."

"What did I say about bargaining? You're not listening to me, Susan. These terms aren't negotiable. The only decision you have to make is whether you want to see Veda again."

"All right," she says softly.

"Good. And Susan?"

"Yes?"

"This time, don't forget the car keys."

And he's gone.

She springs out of the Expedition and hits the ground running. In her mind she is already poring over the list of items he named, organizing them according to where they are in the house. She is good at this, in a sense it is what she has always done best-track, prioritize, multitask, always with one eye on the clock.

In the first sixty seconds she has her coat, gloves, boots, keys, and the flashlight all tucked into her pockets. She swings through the garage for the rope and sprints across the yard through the darkness to the garden shed, the one that Phillip built for them their first summer here in Concord, two years ago. It turned out to be their only summer together, but the tools he bought for her are all still here, many of them unused, each hanging neatly on its nail.

She takes down the shovel, turns, and aims the flashlight down in the corner but the sheet of canvas she keeps there to cover the flower beds is gone. There is a clean rectangle of cement where it normally lies, where she knows-flat-outknows- that it should be. But it is not there. And it is not there, of course, because the man on the phone took it when he came out here and inventoried her belongings, some hours or days or even weeks ago. Intuitively Sue senses this is because he wants her to know that he's been here, that he does not want to leave any doubt about it.

Time, she thinks, and runs back as fast as she can, bypassing the house entirely this time, which is a mistake. It is quite dark now, and the only light source in the backyard is the faint yellowish illumination bleeding from the kitchen window, just above the sink. When she rounds the side of the house she trips on something and goes flying, landing hard on the palms of her hands, hearing her own breath go out of her with a muffledguff. She hears her keys jingling somewhere beside her. She gropes the cold blades of grass in front of her in search of the flashlight, but that's gone too and for a moment she's skating wildly toward the edge of panic. She can hear the phone chirping inside the Expedition down in the driveway. It sounds hugely, massively, dreamily far away.

It hasn't been three minutes yet. It hasn't even been close.

Standing up, Sue spins around and catches the gleam of the flashlight in the grass and switches it on, splashing it over the yard in search of the keys. The phone is still ringing in the Expedition: the third ring dwindling away, a silence, and the fourth ring starting. She can see the flashlight beam trembling as her whole body shakes harder in the cadence of some accelerated pounding within. Her heart is a lunatic banging on a metal can. It is like swimming to the surface with her lungs bursting for air, kicking furiously, but the surface just keeps pulling farther away from her no matter how hard she struggles for it. Finally with an audible curse Sue gives up looking for the lost keys, wrenches herself forward, running for the Expedition, and diving inside to snatch the phone from the passenger seat where she'd abandoned it. She doesn't even have enough air in her lungs to speak, just gasps, trying not to pass out.