Jeffery Deaver - Speaking In Tongues

She flipped through the rest of the files and clippings.

Nothing she found told her anything helpful. She shoved them under the bed. What can I do? There has to- Then she heard the footsteps.

Faint at first.

Oh, no… Peter was coming back up the hall.

Well, he’d missed her before.

Closer, closer. Very soft now, as if he was trying not to make any noise. But she heard his breathing and remembered the picture of the eerie-looking boy-his twisted mouth, the tip of his pale tongue in the corner of his lips. She remembered the stained sheets and wondered if he was walking around, looking for her, masturbating…

Megan shivered violently. Started to cry. She eased up to the door, put her head against it, listened.

No sounds from the other side.

Had he-?

A fierce pounding on the door. The recoil knocked her to her knees.

Another crash.

A whispered voice. “Megan And in that faint word she heard lust and desperation and hunger. “Megan.

He knows I’m here… He knows who I am!

Peter was rattling the lock. A few loud slams of a brick or baseball bat on the padlock.

No, please… Why’d Matthews leave her alone with him? As much as she hated the doctor, Megan prayed he’d return.

“Megannnnnnn?” It now sounded as if the boy was laughing.

A sudden crash, into the door itself. Then another. And another. Suddenly a rusty metal rod-like the spears in his horrible comic books-cracked the wood and poked through a few inches. Just as Peter pulled the metal back out Megan leapt into the bathroom, plastered herself against the wall. She heard his breath on the door and she knew he was looking through the hole he’d made. Looking for her.

“Megan…

But from that angle he couldn’t see that there was a bathroom; the door was to the side.

For an eternity she listened to his lecherous breathing. Finally he walked off.

She started back into the room. But stopped.

Had he really gone? she wondered.

She decided she’d wait until dark. Peter might be outside and he’d see her. And if she plugged up the hole he’d know for certain she was there.

She sat on the toilet, lowered her head to her hands and cried.

Come on, girl. Get up.

I can’t. No, I can’t. I’m scared.

Of course you’re scared, Crazy Megan chides. But what’s that got to do with anything? Lookit that. Lookit the bathroom window.

Megan looked at the bathroom window.

No, it’s nuts to think about it.

You know what you’ve got to do.

I can’t do it, Megan thought. I just can’t.

Yeah? What choice’ve you got?

Megan stood and walked to the window, reached through the bars and touched the filthy glass.

I can’t.

Yes, you can!

Megan crawled back into the room, praying that Peter wasn’t outside the door and looking through the peephole he’d made. She reached under the bed, sure she’d come up with a handful of rat. But no, she found only the manila file folder she’d been looking for. She returned to the bathroom and eased up to the window, pressed the folder against the glass. She drew back her fist and slugged the pane. The punch was hard but the glass held. She hit it again and this time a long crack spread from the top to the bottom of the window Finally, another slug and the glass shattered. She pulled her fist back just as the sharp shards fell to the windowsill.

She picked a triangular piece of glass about eight inches long, narrow as a knife. Taking her cue from patient Victoria Skelling’s sad end, Megan, using her teeth, ripped a strip off one of the mattress pads on the wall. She wound this around the base of the splinter to make a handle.

Good, C.M. says with approval. Proud of her other self

No, better than good Megan reflected: great. Fuck you, Dr. Matthews. I feel great! It reminded her of how she’d felt when she’d written those letters to her parents in Dr. Hanson’s office. It was scary, it hurt, but it was completely honest.

Great.

Crazy Megan wonders, So what’s next?

“Fuck the kid up with the knife,” Megan responded out loud. “Then get his keys and book on out of here.”

Atta girl, C.M. offers. But what about the dogs?

They’ve got claws, I’ve got claws. Megan dramatically held up the glass.

Crazy Megan is impressed as hell.

“There’s a van.”

“A van?” Bett asked.

“Following us,” Tate continued, as they drove past the Ski Chalet in Chantilly.

Bett started to turn.

“No, don’t,” he said.

She turned back. Looked at her hands, fingers tipped in faint purple polish. “Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure. A white van.”

Tate made a slow circle through the shopping center then exited on Route 50 and sped east. He pulled into the Greenbriar strip mall, stopped at the Starbucks and climbed out. He bought two teas topped with foamed milk and returned to the car.

They sipped them for a moment and when a red Ford Explorer cut between his Lexus and the van he hit the gas and took off past a bookstore, streaking onto Majestic Lane and just catching the tail end of the light that put him back on Route 50, heading west this time.

When he settled into the right lane he noticed the white van was still with him.

“How’d he do that?” Tate wondered aloud.

“He’s still there?”

“Yep. Hell, he’s good.”

They continued west, passing under Route 28, which was the dividing line between civilization here and the farmland that led eventually to the mountains.

“What’re we going to do?”

But Tate didn’t answer, hardly even heard the question. He was looking at a large sign that said, FUTURE HOME OF LIBERTY PARK…

He laughed out loud.

This was one of those odd things, noticing the sign at the same time the van was following them. A high-grade coincidence, he would have said. Bett-well, the old Bett-would of course have attributed it to the stars or the spirits or past lives or something. Didn’t matter. He’d made the connection and at last he had a solid lead.

“What?” she cried, alarmed, responding both to his outrageous U-turn, skidding 180 degrees over the grassy median and the harsh laugh coming from his throat.

“I just figured something out. We’re going to my place for a minute. I have to get something.”

“Oh. What?”

“A gun.”

Bett’s head turned toward him then away. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yep. Very serious.”

Some years ago, when Tate had been prosecuting the improbable case of the murder of a Jamaican drug dealer at a Wendy’s restaurant in suburban Burke, Konnie Konstantinatis had poked his head into Tate’s office.

“Time you got yourself a piece.”

“Of what?”

“Ha. You’ll want a revolver ‘cause all you do is point ‘n’ shoot. You’re not a boy to mess with clips and safeties and stuff like that.”

“What’s a clip?”

Tate had been joking, of course-every commonwealth’s attorney in Virginia was well versed in the lore of firearms-but the fact was he re -ally didn’t know guns well. The Judge didn’t hold with weapons, didn’t see any need for them and believed the countryside would be much more highly populated without weaponry

But Konnie wouldn’t take no for an answer and within a week Tate found himself the owner of a very unglamorous Smith & Wesson.38 special, sporting six chambers, only five loaded, the one under the hammer being forever empty; as Konnie always preached.

This gun was locked away where it’d been for the past three or four years-in a trunk in Tate’s barn. He now sped up his driveway and leapt out, observing that with his manic driving he’d lost the white van without intending to. He ran into the barn, found the key on his chain and after much jiggling managed to open the trunk. The gun, still coated with oil as he’d left it, was in a Ziploc bag. He took it out, wiped it clean and slipped it into his pocket.