Грег Иган: The Nearest

She started with the plunge into the river. Natalie had shut off the driver supervision features ten minutes before, and while the car’s software fell somewhat short of psychiatric qualifications, up to that point it had not assessed her as being affected by any drug or medical condition: She had not been swerving erratically, or shouting obscenities, or nodding off behind the wheel. The manual override had amounted to telling the car not to trust any of its own systems from then on, so while the black box had dutifully logged her GPS coordinates as she steered off the road, the car itself had become agnostic about the wisdom of this behavior. For all it knew, the driver might have had an honest reason to believe that the car’s sensors were broken and it was liable to kill someone if it didn’t butt out and let a human take over completely.

But the GPS trace was enough to show that Natalie hadn’t been driving terribly fast at any point. She’d sped up enough to ensure that her momentum would take her over the riverbank and into the water, but she hadn’t slammed her foot down and accelerated wildly, rushing toward oblivion. When the car came to a stop in the water, it hadn’t even triggered the airbags.

Kate went back to the morning of the killings and followed the car away from the scene. At first, Natalie seemed to be heading straight for her mother’s house, but when she came within a few blocks of it, she changed her mind. She’d turned around and started driving toward her friend Mina’s apartment, only to back out again. Then her brother’s house. Then two other friends. She’d had no phone with her, and all of these people had claimed that they’d heard nothing from Natalie on that day, or since. But apparently, every time she’d made a plan to seek help, she’d given up on the idea without waiting to be rebuffed.

Kate could understand a woman who’d killed her family in a psychotic fugue snapping out of it and turning in desperation to her mother, only to decide at the last minute that she had no hope of being treated with anything but revulsion. But why would she then imagine that a whole succession of other people might be more forgiving, only to abandon that hope each time it was about to be tested?

After all the aborted journeys toward familiar faces, Natalie had driven to a shopping mall, far from her own home, and the car had remained parked there for almost three hours. That seemed like a long time to spend gathering provisions for a dash out of town—which she’d turned out to have no intention of doing, unless she’d somehow procured access to another vehicle. She’d taken her bank cards when she fled from the house, but hadn’t used them anywhere; whatever she’d bought in the mall, she must have paid for it with the remnants of her last cash withdrawal of three hundred dollars, from a few days before.

When she left the mall, she’d driven around the city in a wide arc until evening, as if she were simply killing time. She’d stopped at a fast food strip around nine o’clock, and then headed for the river to ditch the car.

Kate heard birdsong and looked away from her notepad; it was almost dawn. She checked the status of her request for divers; it had been flagged as “on hold” until a forensics team had examined the car itself.

She sent Reza a message to tell him she wouldn’t be home, then drove off in search of a diner where she could grab breakfast and use the restroom. In the mirror, she looked puffy-eyed and disheveled; she took off her shirt and washed under her arms. Natalie must have been in a much worse state when she waded out of the river, but maybe she’d been carrying a change of clothes in a plastic bag. After six days, three with rain, it was too late to send in dogs to try to pick up her scent from the riverbank.

Kate sat in a booth in the diner drinking coffee until it was almost seven o’clock, then she drove to the shopping mall where Natalie had parked for three hours. The security cameras covered the whole parking lot, and it wasn’t hard to find the moment in the recordings when Natalie drove in, but when she left the car, carrying two large, empty shopping bags, she walked away, out onto the street. Kate went through all the footage of the pedestrian entrances, but Natalie hadn’t doubled back. Whatever she’d bought in that time, she’d bought somewhere else. There were hundreds of small, freestanding shops within an hour’s walk of the mall.

Kate returned to the parking lot footage, at the time she knew the car had departed. Natalie appeared, with the shopping bags bulging, but it was impossible to see what they contained. New clothes? Hair dye? Scissors? It wouldn’t take much for her to render herself unrecognizable to anyone but her closest friends. A clear enough shot by a public CCTV camera might still trigger a face-matching algorithm, but she’d have to be much stupider than she’d proved to be so far to offer herself up to that kind of scrutiny.

The mall security guard had been watching over Kate’s shoulder. “That’s the woman who killed her own kids?” he asked. Natalie’s face was all over the media as a missing person, but the official line was still far from naming her as a suspect.

“Maybe.” Kate turned to him with a warning glance; she really didn’t want to hear anyone’s opinion on what fate Natalie deserved.

“Good luck,” he said.

She left the mall and walked out onto the street. “Mark every retailer in a six-kilometer radius,” she told her notepad, “and give me a path that visits them all.”

Kate woke with a headache and squinted at the bedside clock. It was ten minutes to three. She groaned softly and closed her eyes, then felt someone’s warm, naked skin brush against her.

She jerked her arm away and leaped out of bed. There was enough light coming through the curtains for her to see the man lying asleep where Reza should have been.

She was trembling from the shock, but she tried to calm herself and plan her next move carefully. She thought of going to the kitchen and arming herself with a knife, but if there was a struggle that might not work in her favor.

She snatched up her phone and tiptoed into the passageway. The safest thing might be to take Michael out to the car and drive away, before she even risked calling for help. But where was Reza? Any protracted scuffle in the bedroom would have woken her, so he must have been lured out of the room somehow—before being tied up and gagged, maybe drugged, maybe beaten senseless. So she had to get Michael to safety, but then return as quickly as possible, and do it all without waking the intruder.

She walked down the passageway in the darkness, treading as lightly as she could. As she entered the nursery, she felt her skin prickling with horror, and she had to cover her mouth with her hand to keep herself silent. She stared at the shape in the cot, afraid to raise the phone and illuminate it, but when she finally found the courage, the harsh light made the revelation unbearable. She staggered back, then fled.

She ran into the bedroom and switched on the light. “What have you done to him?” she roared. “What have you done to my son?”

The intruder shielded his face with his arm and then lowered it and peered at her groggily. “Kate? What’s happened?” He climbed off the bed and approached her; she flinched away from him, raising one hand with her fist clenched. She didn’t need a weapon; she’d beat the truth out of him with her bare hands.

“Kate? Talk to me!” He stood, rooted to the spot, feigning concern. “Has something happened to Michael? Should I call an ambulance?”

“Don’t play games with me!” she bellowed. “Where have you taken him?”

“Are you saying he’s not in his cot?” The intruder rushed past her, out into the passageway; she followed him halfway, but couldn’t bring herself to go back into the nursery. He switched on the light, then after a while she heard him whispering, “Shh, pesaram, it’s all right.” So this man spoke Persian—or was he just mocking her? Had he bugged the house and listened to all the things she and Reza said?