CHAPTER 30
I’d been through this before, so I expected everything that happened next, or I should say that I wasn’t surprised. I followed the instructions and looked at the admin e-mail account for my One World game. Right at the top of the queue was an e-mail from Elliot Uretsky. The time stamp on the e-mail read one minute in the past, and the message contained only a link, which I clicked without hesitation.
An on-screen prompt appeared, asking me if I wanted to allow a two-way video chat. No, of course I didn’t want to, but I did it, anyway. I had to. I also knew that the Web page that loaded ran through the same anonymous proxy server Uretsky had used before, to broadcast poor Dr. Adams’s misery.
The black rectangular shape centered on the Web page gave way to a depressingly familiar image, one that filled me with horror and rage all over again. I gazed upon the concrete windowless room, nondescript in every way except for a single lightbulb that dangled above a sturdy oak desk chair. I couldn’t feel the dampness of the room, but I could hear the echoes of dripping water from a corroded copper pipe—but only when the woman beneath that pipe wasn’t making muted cries for help.
I couldn’t see the gag silencing those cries, because a bag made from a velvety silk cloth, one that shone like a panther’s fur in the dim room, had been placed over her head. Her hands, white skin tanned to a shade of brown, were bound to the arms of the chair, and I assumed her feet were secured as well. I also assumed the chair was bolted to the floor; otherwise, her thrashing would have toppled it over.
Uretsky’s face filled the screen—not his face, really, but the mask of Mario from the Super Mario Bros. video game. Uretsky had used the same character as his Facebook avatar. The red hat, bulbous nose, and trademark mustache of Mario were all there, but Uretsky had cut out eyeholes where the mask’s eyes should have been, and he cut a hole for his mouth as well.
“John, how nice to see you again,” Uretsky said. That voice, soulless as the dead, chilled my skin. “You’re looking unwell, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“What . . . ,” I said, trying to catch my breath, finding it hard to speak. “What are you doing?”
Ruby got her face in front of the laptop’s camera and shouted, “Stop it! Stop it now! You let her go!”
Uretsky screamed loudly in response, with a high-pitched shriek, not unlike the noise of a boiling teakettle, a yell so piercing that we were both silenced.
“I can’t think when you two are shouting at me,” Uretsky said.
“Well, we can’t talk to you with that mask on. Take it off, you coward.”
“Can’t do that, John,” Uretsky replied. “You might take a picture.”
“You’re not a felon. I checked.”
I regretted the words the moment they slipped out of my mouth. “You checked up on me?” Uretsky said, his voice rising with surprise.
“On the Internet.” I spoke quickly, crafting a suitable lie without much fumbling. “I used a Web search to look you up. Not the police. I didn’t violate the rules.”
Uretsky stepped back from the camera, pondering. He nodded, slowly and several times, and I thought I could see the faint outline of a smile inside that grotesque mask. “Oh, very well. You didn’t cheat. So, what did you find?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “But I do know about Carl Swain.”
I fixed my gaze upon Uretsky’s eyes when I said Swain’s name, searching every pixel of the grainy video feed for a slight glimmer of recognition, a hint that I’d struck a nerve. Did he know Swain? Was there some connection? Behind the ovals he had cut out for eyeholes, I saw nothing but the black infinity of death. If Uretsky wondered about my non sequitur, he didn’t say.
“I’ve made sure to keep my face off the Internet. You don’t know what I look like, and that’s part of the fun. I want to keep this mask on, and I want you two to keep playing my game. Is that understood?”
What other choice did I have but to nod?
“Now then,” Uretsky continued. “Have you figured out what you’re to do next?”
“Qetesh,” I said.
“Yes, Qetesh, a luscious Sumerian goddess. Her name means ‘holy woman,’ ” Uretsky said. “A goddess of sacred ecstasy and sexual pleasures. So, do you get it yet?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, it’s going to be a dandy good time,” Uretsky said. “But I decided that you’ll need a bit more incentive than Dr. Adams’s life to pull this one off.”
Uretsky stepped away from the camera, giving us a clear view of the woman strapped to the chair, still struggling mightily, albeit futilely, to break free. Uretsky, mask on, materialized behind the woman, as though conjured from the ether. In a sweeping motion, he ripped off the hood covering the head of his prisoner. Ruby gripped the back of my chair in response.
“Mom?” Ruby’s shaky, uncertain voice caught in her throat. Eventually, after recognition set in, once the brain had time to process the inconceivable, Ruby shouted, “Mom!”
It took me a moment longer to register what I was seeing, but there she was, Winifred Dawes, Ruby’s mom, tied to that chair and somehow Uretsky’s prisoner.
Ruby began to scream. Her anguished cries, so visceral, so instinctual, went far beyond any sound I had ever heard from my wife. “Mom!” Ruby shouted again and again before the sobs took over.
Ruby, hyperventilating, couldn’t speak for a minute or so. She lost her footing, and I gave her my chair, while I leaned in close to get level with the camera. Ruby’s eyes stayed fixed on her mother. I didn’t know if Winnie could see her daughter, but the pain etched on her face whenever Ruby spoke told me that, at a minimum, she could hear her voice.
“Please . . . please, Elliot,” Ruby managed to say. “You could just let her go . . . let her go, now. Okay? You could do that.”
Winnie, with her short and spiky hair, bleached blond in some spots, left brown in others, and her skin pruned by the persistent Caribbean sun, should have seemed a familiar sight, but here, in this dark prison, she was barely recognizable. Her bright blue eyes were as wide as two quarters, but I couldn’t get a good look at her face. She kept shaking her head, as though her hair were on fire. The ball gag in her mouth, I suspected, had once been in poor Dr. Adams’s mouth, too.
“I’d make the introductions, but I know you’re already well acquainted,” Uretsky said from behind Winnie. “And you’re going to have to push the limits to save this sweet lady’s life . . . or not.”
“Let her go,” I said. We still had a chance to save Winnie’s life if we did whatever Uretsky had in mind. Perhaps that was why my voice came out sounding oddly calm. “She’s done nothing to you. Come get me instead, dammit!”
Winnie nodded a vigorous yes. Son-in-law or not, she’d switch places with me in a heartbeat. I couldn’t blame her. That was just the survival instinct kicking in.
“Doesn’t work like that,” Uretsky said. “You’ve got more crimes to commit, John . . .” Here Uretsky paused . . . waiting . . . waiting . . . and then he said two words that truly chilled my bones. “And Ruby.”
I hated that he’d even spoken my wife’s name. The privilege wasn’t his. Besides, this wasn’t about her; it was about me, and what I’d done to him, or so I thought.
But in that very next instant, I knew. Qetesh. Sacred ecstasy. Sexual pleasure. Uretsky wanted Ruby to commit the next crime, not me. And I knew what the crime was, too.
“Please,” I said. “Don’t do this. There’s got to be another way.”
“No,” Uretsky said. “The show must go on.” The mask made Uretsky’s low voice sound hollow and breathy, more terrifying. “Now, Ruby, aren’t you at all curious how I managed to get your mom to be my guest here?”
Each ragged breath Ruby took sounded like a record skipping. She managed only to say, “Please let her go. Mommy, I love you. Don’t worry. We’re going to save you. I’ll do anything.”
Uretsky put the bag over Winnie’s head again. He came around in front of her chair to face the camera.
“I called your mom and pretended to be one of John’s climbing buddies, told her we were the closest of friends,” Uretsky said. “I also broke the good news that you’d gone into complete remission, that the meds had worked wonders, and I was putting together a big surprise party in your honor. You and John knew nothing about this, of course, but I was arranging the flights and accommodations for all the out-of-town relatives. Guess who picked her up curbside at the terminal?”
Behind Uretsky, I could see Winnie thrashing about like her chair was electrified.
“This isn’t an acquaintance’s life hanging in the balance. It’s Mom. Good relationship or not, she’s still your mother, Ruby. How far are you willing to go to save her? What will you do? Can you be transformed? Those are my questions. Questions that demand answers.”
“What do you want me to do?” I said.
“Not you,” Uretsky said, confirming my darkest fear. “Ruby is going to have to participate this time.”
“What do you want?” I asked again.
“Qetesh represents divine sexual pleasure. Ruby is going to provide someone with the real deal.”
“She has cancer, you sick bastard,” I said.
“The crime she is to commit is one of the oldest known professions.”
Ruby got her face level with the camera. She didn’t flinch from Uretsky’s eyes—eyes swimming with madness. “Tell me,” she said.
“You will go to a bar of my choosing, and there you will proposition a stranger for sex in exchange for cash. You will whore yourself to this strange man and bring him to a hotel room that I’ve set up for this rendezvous. I’ve taped an envelope to the front right tire of your car.” Ruby and I glanced at each other, thinking the same thing: He was here? “Inside that envelope you’ll find the address to the hotel I’ve rented under the name John Bodine, and the key card to your room. You will also find the name and address of the nearby bar where you will select your client. You will let him have his way with you, whatever his desire, and then, once it’s over, you’ll take his money. You have twenty-four hours to complete this task. Simple as that.”
“And if I don’t?” Ruby asked, her voice a whimper.
Uretsky held up the pruning shears for us both to see. “Then I’ll strip your mother of her fingers, one by one, before I strip her of her life.”