Joe Schreiber: Chasing the dead

"You made it," he says, as if expecting nothing less.

"I don't," she says, and swallows dryly, "have my keys. I'm sorry. I tripped. I don't know where they went, I couldn't…"

Her voice trails off and the silence that follows it is endless, fathomless. When the voice speaks again there is a hollow darkness within it that chills her to her very soul.

"That's too bad, Susan. I guess we can't play after all."

"Wait."

"I gave you clear instructions. All you've done is disappoint me."

"Please-"

"Listen closely now, because you're about to hear me slit your baby's throat."

"No!"

"Too late, Susan."

"Stop it!" She jerks straight upright in the front seat, both hands clutching helplessly at the phone as if she could somehow reach through and rescue Veda, and her coat flap catches on her left sleeve. As the edge of the coat flips up, its outer pocket tips sideways and her keys spill out along with her gloves, bouncing off her knee and falling to the floor.

You put them in your pocket. That's where they were the whole time, stuffed between your gloves where you couldn't hear them jingling.

"Wait!" she shouts, ramming her hand down below her feet, fingers probing, encountering the little metal ridges hooked to the reassuring weight of the clicker, right there in her palm. "I have them! They were in my pocket! I have them!"

She slips the key into the ignition, the dashboard brightening obediently in front of her.

"Hello?" she says. "Are you there? Can you hear me?"

She listens. For an eternity, nothing. Then:

"Do you have everything else?" he asks.

She thinks of the canvas tarp, and the shovel for that matter, which ended up somewhere in the side yard when she fell on her face. But there is no margin for error, she judges, not now, perhaps not ever again. "Yes," she lies smoothly.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

There is a pause long enough that she has to wrestle to control her trembling for fear that he can hear it in her respiration. Despite the cold she can feel a droplet of sweat leaking from her right armpit down her ribs. "All right, then." He sounds convinced, or wants her to think that he is. Either way it is no longer of any consequence. "Start the car and head east toward Route 2. Get off on 23 and look for the sign for Everett Road. When you get there you're going to head north. I'll call you again when you get there. And remember, Susan."

"What?"

"You have a job to do. I'll be watching you. If you make any unauthorized stops to ask for help or use a pay phone, I will cut your little girl up and send you the pieces. Do you believe me?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Good. We'll be in touch."

"When will you-"

Click.He's gone.

For the first few minutes, she just drives. She does not permit herself to think. Not about Marilyn, not about the voice, and most of all, not about Veda. Not yet.

Traffic is still heavy on Route 2 but at least it's moving. People are getting back to their homes, settling in for the evening, switching on the TV, perhaps pouring themselves a glass of wine. For those unfortunate enough to be on the road, the first few white flakes are starting to sift down, bouncing off her windshield as she heads north. Eventually she gets off on Everett Road, two lanes of nothing much at all.

Her mind drifts slightly. It is not advisable, this drifting, but there it is.

She cannot help but think what it would be like if Phillip were here.

The temptation to try to call him, to grab the phone and punch in the West Coast number he left on her machine a year or so ago, six months after stepping permanently out of her life, is far stronger than any urge to call the police. Sue does not have much faith in the police. She doesn't exactly have a whole lot of faith in Phillip, either-what can you say about a man who abandons his wife and one-month-old daughter, even if he leaves them with a yacht, anArchitectural Digest home, and full ownership of the third largest real estate office in Boston?

Abandoned is abandoned, as her friend Natalie is fond of saying, and scum is scum. Of course Natalie always sounds a little envious when she says this, like she wouldn't mind finding out firsthand what it's like being abandoned with a big house and millions of dollars to spend, but Sue is not even remotely deluded about the emotional fallout of Phillip's disappearance. She knows that Veda will grow up without a father, nothing more than a tall, narrow-shouldered shadow with graying hair leaning over her bassinet on the videotape that Sue has no intention of ever allowing her daughter to watch.

But the fact is that Phillip Chamberlain has been a part of her life for almost as far back as Sue can remember. In elementary school back in their hometown of Gray Haven, Massachusetts, they were the two classic pillars upon which the caste system rested: Nerd Boy and Fat Girl. They've been through the shit together. By tenth grade Sue thinned out and sprouted breasts, and the big lips that had once been the object of such unimaginative scorn were regarded with admiration, jealousy, and flat-out lust. Meanwhile it was obvious to everyone that the reason Phillip didn't give a rat's ass what anybody thought was because he was smart enough to do whatever he wanted. And the first thing he wanted was to get out of Gray Haven.

But even after he started getting scholarship offers to Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford, and she was turning down dates from quarterbacks, the glue between them-the intractable outsiders' bond-had only grown stronger. They tried being boyfriend and girlfriend for a while, even made out a few times in the backseat of Phillip's Toyota-it seemed like Extreme's "More Than Words" was always playing on the stereo-but it was always easier being friends.

With that in mind, somebody once remarked (was it Phillip himself?) that their eventual marriage was built more on inevitability than any sort of romance or even affection. Certainly therewas plenty of affection too, maybe even a little steamy romance in their backseat mash sessions. But more than anything there was just the sense of having been there for each other during a particularly awful period of their lives, a moment so horrible that you needed to share it with somebody or else it would destroy you.

After high school there was a ten-year-plus lull when they rarely saw each other. Phillip graduated from Harvard and began buying apartment buildings around town, little ones and then big ones. Sue dropped out of college and started driving an ambulance for a living, a job she found just crazy enough to temporarily satisfy the chaos-addict that she'd discovered lurking inside herself. Throughout the nineties they kept in touch via phone calls, Christmas cards, and e-mails, along with that occasional moment of ESP when she was sure that he was thinking about her at the same moment she was thinking about him. She worked maniacal hours, dated the usual string of police-scanner geeks and buzz-cut paramedics, went to bars, took drugs, and woke up in too many different places without knowing exactly where her clothes were.

That period of her life had bottomed out on one Fourth of July weekend on the night she tried to drive home from Singing Beach, blind drunk, to the vacation condo she was renting in Beverly Farms. Despite the fact that the road refused to hold still, ambulance-driver bravado carried the day and she was sure she could make it, right up to the moment her old Jeep Wrangler left the road and rolled over three times before hitting a tree. Sue spent six hours in the OR but made it out alive, scared, scarred, and sober. It was all veryBehind the Music, but no less effective for all of that, a reminder that when life wants to get our attention it doesn't bother with half-measures. Eight months later she ran into Phillip at a Super Bowl party at a mutual friend's house. They ended up back at his brownstone on Beacon Hill, where he said nothing about the scars running up her abdomen and cleaving her right nipple in half, but only kissed her and held her in his arms. And Sue would be lying if she didn't admit, at least to herself, that the first emotion that she felt was a sense of relief, of finally being home.