I had disliked the implication that I was stupid, but even if I hadn’t, I knew for myself that my methods had stopped working. Also I was nothing if not a good student. So I set myself to “feeling things” as often as I could. To let my control go, to let whatever small nasty thing that lived in the space behind my heart go free.
I imagine DI Green thought I would begin to make amends with my family, with Watson, with myself, that I would take “advantage” of this opportunity she had granted me. That I would perhaps break down in tears on her sofa picturesquely while she made me a picturesque cup of chamomile tea. How could one blame her for that?
I didn’t blame her. I didn’t cry. I took my fury with me, and fled. I had, as they say, bigger fish to fry.
HENCE, THIS BIT OF CASUAL CRUELTY ON MY SIDE OF THE closet door. The petty kind, the girl you let into your house for two straight weeks was building a case against you for the government kind, unnecessary to the case I was solving, a string of words specifically engineered to pour salt into an open wound. And yet it was human to feel it, to know that this awful man had been aiding and abetting an even more awful man for money, and to want to make him understand the full weight of his stupidity.
He had looked at a girl, his teenage son’s girlfriend, and seen a Shirley Temple where he should have seen poison.
“My God,” he was saying. “You’re disgusting. How old are you? What have you been doing with my boy?”
“Ten seconds.” I slammed the hammer again into the closet door. The wood was beginning to divot. “Nine. Eight.”
I felt badly about his son in an abstract way that was, still, an improvement on not feeling at all. Danny had been an easy mark—lost-looking, sweaty even in the cold, a boy whose tiny dog made him look comically large. He had been too scared to try anything physical with me, which suited me just fine. Mostly we played with Button, his terrier, in the family’s backyard. Button was a runner, and when she escaped through the board in a fence (a board I had of course pried loose myself), I let Danny tear after her while I took myself to his father’s office to find the documentation I needed. The photos on the fireplace were nearly enough: Danny and his father on a catamaran; Danny and his father beneath the Sagrada Familia in Spain; Danny and his father on safari, the vague blur of Danny’s mother behind them in the Jeep. I knew then how Lucien Moriarty’s blood money was being spent. All I’d needed was the proof.
Button escaped every day for a week. Enterprising dog.
I had no actual plan to hurt Danny. His father didn’t need to know that. “Three,” I said, “two, one,” and on cue, the man in the closet drew in a shaky breath.
By the time the sun had finished setting, I had everything I needed.
“What do I tell my son?” he asked as I packed up my kit.
I didn’t answer. It wasn’t any of my business, after all.
IT TOOK ME THE USUAL FORTY-FIVE MINUTES TO WALK THE five blocks to my lodgings. Twice I thought I was being followed, and once, I knew I was—no one carries a copy of the local paper under their arm in such a manner, much less puts it up to hide their face when you pass the shop window they’re spying from. I doubled back, ducked into a Starbucks toilet to change my disguise (wig, yoga pants, trainers), then waited until a group of girls in athletic wear jogged by and, keeping a safe distance, joined them.
By the time I arrived, I was exhausted. Still, I had work to do—the removal and safekeeping of my wig, laid gently in silk and stored in the wooden box below the bed; a thorough cleaning of my face and the soles of my boots; blocking the door, three windows, and the too-large air vent whose existence had nearly kept me from renting these rooms in the first place. Sublet ads on Craigslist were rarely so detailed. One had to know the right questions to ask.
This process took time, but I have never found routine tedious so long as it directly contributed to keeping me alive. Once I was sure I was secure, I put on a Chopin etude at a level loud enough to drown out any noise I might make, and then I methodically took apart my room, looking for cameras, listening devices, or finely drilled holes. There were none.
This only brought me to nine o’clock. After some consideration, I decided I had the following options for the rest of my night:
Take the remainder of the oxycodone in the lining of my coat.
Find a television show to stream that did not mention murder and/or bodily harm, opiates, romantic relationships, the United Kingdom, or, oddly enough, Sherlock Holmes. I say oddly because my great-great-great-grandfather was referenced in the oddest places. I’d taken to watching select episodes of Star Trek, as it both fit my criteria and featured an android character I was fond of. Then came a spate of episodes where he dressed up in a deerstalker and solved crimes with some Star Trek Watson. I was now in need of a new show.
Take the remainder of the oxy in the lining of my coat—a coat which my uncle Leander, in his infinite good taste, had given me for Christmas two years ago and which still fit because that was the year I’d decided to stop eating to starve the bad thing out of me, a coat whose pockets I had ripped the lining of for this exact purpose; after, perhaps, I could go out into the dark and let some Moriarty thug trace my steps down to that particular bridge over the Potomac where, over the past few days, I’d seen four if not five opportunities to score properly; I would have my stash, and then I could take the high of that feeling (not the high itself, but the high of knowing that I was steps away from a night into which I could finally, irrevocably escape) and use it—really, if it were going to be over, finally over, I’d take the knife out of my boot and drive its point through that Moriarty thug’s throat to know, once and for all, that one less man would be chasing Watson, that Watson would be that one small bit safer. Back in my room, waiting for the inevitable heavy fall (police interference or violent retribution), I’d write out my confession. Perhaps, as a finishing touch, I’d pull out the photograph from that Sunday in March when my mother gave me my first chemistry set. She had a hand on my shoulder. I was smiling, a child. I could put it now in my pockets to be found. Play the lost little girl card one last time. That wordless admission of guilt would certainly appeal to certain members of my family, though I imagine Watson would find it tasteless. (Every evening I acknowledged the possibility of engineering that ending, and every night I reminded myself what a waste it was, what a waste of myself, my skills, my strength, and I wasn’t a waste. I wasn’t. I wasn’t. I would not do it.)
Photograph the remainder of my pills, text that photograph to DI Green as proof I hadn’t taken them (an honor system, obviously; I was, among other things, attempting to be honorable), put the pills back into my coat, and then clean out my goddamn makeup bag.
I took the photo and sent it. Then, gritting my teeth, I dumped my cosmetics out onto the floor. I wet a paper towel and started scrubbing.
My train left in eight hours. I would be in New York by noon.
Three
Jamie
MY FATHER PLAYED MADONNA ALL THE WAY TO NEW YORK City.
Not the hits, the stuff you’d generally hear on the radio, but deep cuts. Weird stuff. My father was more of a Bob Dylan guy, so I’d already raised an eyebrow at his choices, but this was weirdness squared. Especially since he apparently knew all the words to “This Used To Be My Playground.”
I didn’t usually give much thought to my father’s weirdnesses (there weren’t enough hours in the day), but it was either wonder about that or why Leander had been so distant when I’d gotten into the car. He hadn’t said a real hello, just nodded, miles away from the front seat of my father’s Camry.