She spoke quickly, quietly. Her face was ravaged: with crying, but not just with crying—with anger too and hurt and fear, and I don’t know what, maybe just living with the whole damn thing all this time. It was painful to look at. My eyes kept wandering away as she spoke. I kept gazing at the scarred and broken linoleum floor or at the walls or at nothing, at anything except her.
“I mean, I just wanted to leave it alone already. I’d been over it and over it, you know. Not just Trader—what happened to us in that house. That was only the start of it for me. Then there were all the foster fathers, all the . . . It was all such a mess. I’d tried every kind of therapy there was. Remembering. Forgetting. Drugs. Alcohol. Sex.”
She glanced at me on sex to check my reaction. I didn’t react much. “Just tell me,” I said.
“But I thought at least Trader was dead. I thought at least there was that, at least you’d killed her. And then . . . that man . . . the dead children . . . The ‘House of Evil,’ they called it.”
“Martin Emory,” I said.
“I couldn’t stop watching the stories on TV. They had it on 24/7. The graves in the forest. The children’s faces. And then that picture. That photograph: the man, Martin Emory, sitting in a car . . . And right next to him, there she was . . .”
“The Fat Woman. Our old friend Aunt Jane.”
“Our old friend . . .”
I forced myself to look at her. She was gazing past her clenched fist, lost in her own ferocity. And I was lost too—lost in her story, lost in the sight of her, lost in my own hurt at what she had become. I couldn’t help but think of how she was when I dreamed about her. Serene and sweet, womanly and kind—grown-up, but still the way she’d been as a little girl: like the princess in her own stories. All that time, these last three years, I’d been so swept away by that dream of her, I couldn’t really care for anyone else. Not for Bethany, not for anyone. Because in my mind, it was always Samantha. Now here she was, the same face I dreamed, the same woman, but not the same, her mouth twisted and her eyes sour and her whole aspect poisoned with terror and betrayal and a whole childhood of abuse.
“I drove to New York,” she said. “The second I saw that photograph. I just turned off the TV, walked out of my apartment, and got in my car . . . I drove without stopping. I went to the first police station I could find. No idea what I was doing, what I was looking for or what to tell them. I mean, it’s not like I knew the woman’s real name or where that horrible house had been, or where the orphanage was or anything. I asked the sergeant at the front desk if I could talk to the detectives on the case, but she said it was an undercover operation and their identities were confidential. But then I overheard two patrolmen talking about a cop who’d been wounded in the house, who was in a hospital in Westchester. So I just . . . I got back in my car . . . ”
I grunted, as if I’d been struck. Suddenly I understood. She had been to the hospital in Westchester. Of course. I must have seen her there. That must have been it. I remembered how I had blacked out as I was leaving the place. I must have walked right by her and somehow recognized her and shut the recognition out of my mind. Until later. Until I was sick with withdrawal—just as I was sick again now. Then I dreamed about her coming to take care of me. The adult Samantha.
“Danny? Danny, are you all right?”
I started to answer but the words died on my lips and no—no, I was not all right. A new and denser fog had engulfed me. I grew wildly dizzy sitting there. Dazed, I stared at her through fever and confusion and I thought I was seeing her now as I must have seen her then, at the hospital in Westchester, seeing her in a strangely bright and visionary way. I felt beads of sweat breaking out on my forehead. And I thought: Of course I recognized her. I would always recognize her. I would know her anywhere, everywhere—forever. Right this minute, I could see her not only as she was. I could also see the face of the six-year-old child she had been, just as clearly as if no time had passed at all. Not only that—I could see what had happened to her afterward, every incident of cruelty and violation. I could see her memories—I could remember her memories—I could see the whole miserable life she must have lived, the life I think I knew in my heart she would live when they tore her, sobbing, away from me, when they dragged us out of each other’s clinging arms, mouthing their grown-up lies about how we could write to each other and visit each other, because they didn’t understand, they were grown-ups and they couldn’t understand, that it was violence to separate us, because we were one thing, meant to be together.
“Danny? Are you sick?”
I lifted a trembling hand to my face. My skin was cold and slick with sweat. “Samantha, we . . .”
Our eyes met—and her eyes went wide, and I knew she understood as well. She saw what I saw: that we were one thing. She saw that she could never hide from me, that she was naked to my eyes, all her secrets and the humiliations and violations of her childhood exposed.
Her face contorted. She uncoiled herself quickly. She stepped away from the bed. “I need another smoke,” she said.
I wanted to go to her, needed to go to her, but I couldn’t. I sat where I was, sprawled in my chair, heavy and feverish. “Got to . . . got to . . .” I murmured, my mind drifting.
The afternoon was wearing on. The room was growing darker. By the time I managed to work myself to my feet, the air around me was hazy and gray. I moved out into the common room. Saw her there on the balcony again behind the billowing white curtains. The curtains fluttered and danced, covering her, revealing her, making her seem like a phantom one moment and real the next.
I pushed through them, went out onto the balcony, glad to get a breath of the cold evening air. She was out there, bowing her head, lowering a fresh cigarette to a fresh match, a fresh flame. I wiped the sweat off my face. Squeezed my eyes shut, opened them, trying to clear my head.
“Samantha . . .” I started.
“Just let me finish, Danny. For God’s sake, just let me tell you the rest of it and get out of here.”
She stood with her back to me, smoking in curt, jerky, angry motions, looking out over the railing as the gold went out of the daylight and the evening came.
“It took me three years,” she said. “Weekends. Vacations. Looking for the places. Looking for all of it. Three years.”
I nodded. Those were the three years I had spent in Tyler County, working for the Sheriff’s Department, recovering from the Emory case.
“I didn’t want to do it. It was like an addiction. I kept telling myself to stop. I kept trying to stop. But I couldn’t. And slowly, bit by bit, I dug it up. The missing-person reports on Alexander. The old orphanage where we lived. And you—the detective who turned out to be you. And finally, Washington Falls. And Sarah Longstreet. And her.”
She drew in smoke and I drew in the air, fighting off the fever and the withdrawal haze that kept threatening to close in on me. The curtains blew up around me and I saw her through them, standing against the dusk, backlit by a rising moon.
“Her,” I said thickly.
“Our old friend. Aunt Jane.”
Right. That had to have been it. She had found the Fat Woman. She had done what I couldn’t do. Because she remembered who she was and I didn’t.
She said, “Once I found Sarah Longstreet, once I understood what happened, it didn’t take me long to locate one of the doctors from here, St. Mary’s. Dr. White, his name was. He was part of the team who treated . . . our old friend . . . after the fire . . . At first, he went all confidential on me, but when I told him my story, he went back to his records, found her name . . .”
Despite the cool air, despite darkness falling and even colder air starting to blow in off the trees, I felt the fever sweat break out on my forehead again. I clenched my fists. “What was it?” I said. “What was her name?”
Samantha’s face was bathed in red as she pulled on the cigarette again and it glowed. And as she blew out the breath of smoke, she said: “Bobbi-Ray. Bobbi-Ray Jagger.”
T
he wind swirled and the curtains swirled and my mind swirled as the withdrawal vertigo rose in me again.
“Bobbi-Ray Jagger,” I said. It came out of my throat in a hoarse growl.
“Once I had her name, I used my library’s research tools and found her address,” Samantha said. “It wasn’t hard. She wasn’t far. Just about four hundred miles away from here.” She told me the address. I was losing focus and had to work hard to lock it in my mind. “I called the police, the NYPD, to tell them what I knew . . . And that’s when they came for me. The brothers. What did you call them?”
“The Starks.”
“The Starks. That’s why I couldn’t trust the cops anymore. You see? They said they’d have a detective call me back. And then, that night, as I was coming home from work . . . I saw them.” She turned and faced me, her eyes flashing with anger. The curtains were blowing all around me, all around us both, so that we only caught clear glimpses of each other off and on. In my fever, the effect was dreamlike.
Samantha tossed her cigarette away and immediately worked the pack out of her pocket to get a fresh one. She struck a match like it had struck her first. Lit up. Tugged hard. Hissed out smoke.
“They were in my apartment,” she said flatly. “I saw them through the window, going through the place. I didn’t know how they’d found me or why. I thought maybe it was because I called the police, maybe the Fat Woman had connections with the NYPD . . . I’ve never been so scared in my life.” She made a miserable noise deep in her throat. “Except I have. As we know.”
Weak, fading, I moved to the railing and leaned against it. I tried to keep focusing but she seemed very far away, her voice small and distant.
“I ran. I got my car. There was only one place I could think of to go. To you, Danny. I drove—and I thought I’d lost them. I kept checking my rearview. I used every back road I could. But then, in the middle of nowhere, on an empty stretch of highway—suddenly these headlights . . .” She took a breath, biting back her rage and bitterness. “They ran me off the road. I managed to get into some high grass. They came hunting for me . . . God, Danny! God! They kept moving through the grass, making these threats, telling me what they were going to do to me. These evil, evil things they were going to do . . .” She threw away this cigarette too. She shook her head angrily. “I made it to the river. It was the only way I could hide from them. But the water was so cold . . . and the current . . .”
“Why didn’t you come to me before?” I said, speaking carefully to keep the words from slurring. “Once you knew who I was, why didn’t you just come?”
“You know why,” she said. “I didn’t want to see . . . that look in your eyes. That look there now—the disappointment.”
“I’m not disappointed,” I lied.
She didn’t answer. She only smiled bitterly—and I realized: It was all that way with her. Bitterness and tears. It was that way with her all the time.
“After they found me in the river . . . when I woke up in the hospital, I just . . . I panicked. I started running again. And I kept running. Too afraid to try to contact you again. Too afraid to do anything except run and hide. Until I came here, the only place I could think of where they might not find me, and you might. And I just waited. I waited, thinking, Danny will come. Danny will find me. Danny is so strong, Danny is so fast . . .” She choked on the words and was silent.
I nodded. She’d made it happen too. Finally. After all these years. She’d left a trail for me and I’d found her.
“That’s it,” she said. “That’s everything.” And after a moment’s hesitation—a moment’s thought—she tapped the balcony railing twice with her two palms and said, “I’ve got to go, Danny. I’m gone.”
She moved abruptly into the billowing curtains.
I reached for her, took her arm. “No . . .”
But the fever rose in me again, much stronger, and she and the curtains and the night spun off sickeningly into a haze. She pulled from my grip easily. She went in through the doors.
“Samantha . . .”
I stumbled in after her. I was going dark fast, my legs weak under me. I clawed my way through the swirl of curtains. Pushed out of the night into the common room.
She was already moving toward the hall and its shadows. I tried to go after her. But the fever quickly got worse the moment I was in out of the fresh air. I felt the room growing smaller, the walls pressing in. I gripped the back of the sofa and held on, the room dipping and swaying around me.
“Samantha . . .”
She turned, a dim figure in the dying light. “I’m sorry, Danny. I really am.”
“Trust me. Let me keep you safe.”
“I can’t. I’m sorry. I’ll be safer on my own.”
“No . . .”
I saw her tilt her head. I saw her eyes glistening. “You’re so sweet, Danny. Brave—you’re still so brave. Like one of those knights in the stories I used to tell you. Really. Like one of those knights who married the princess, remember?” On the last word, her voice broke. “I wanted so much to be that girl. I was supposed to be, you know. They ruined me. They had no right, Danny. They had no right.”
“Don’t . . . don’t,” I said thickly. I tried to go to her, but I knew if I let go of the sofa, I would tumble down—down and down into unconsciousness. “Don’t cry, okay? I hate it when you cry.”
She laughed and sobbed at once. “Too bad. I cry a lot. As we see.” She started to fade from me as the shadows folded over her. I couldn’t tell if she was moving away or if I was sinking down into the deeper depths of my fever. “You go get them for me, Danny, all right?” she said. “You get them and make them pay. Get her, Danny. Stop her. Don’t let there be any more Alexanders. Remember him. Remember me.”
“Samantha . . .”
“Oh, Danny,” she said, her voice growing fainter and fainter, almost a whisper now. “Brave Danny. You’re still you. I wish so much I were still me.”
Then she was gone.
I took a step after her but that was all I had in me. The strength went out of my legs and they folded. I only just made it onto the sofa. I lay down there, the darkness deepening. Deepening . . .
Did she come back for me? At one point, I thought she did. At one point, I thought I saw her sitting above me. Looking down at me with those tender eyes. Drawing her cool hand over my forehead. Just like before. Just like I dreamed her when I was in withdrawal before. Just like Samantha . . .
I flashed awake in darkness. I sat up fast. I was weak and my head felt heavy, but my thoughts were clear. I knew where I was. I knew we had to move, had to get out . . .
I peered around me until the shapes of the common room showed themselves. It was the moon that did it, the light of the moon shining through the thin white curtains still dancing around the balcony doors.
“Samantha?” I said.
No answer.
I stood. I moved—too fast. I hit the table, stumbled, nearly fell. Then I put my hand out, felt my way through the deep shadows to the hallway. Moved down the hallway a few steps, away from the moonlight coming in from the balcony, into even deeper darkness.
The huge hospital stretched empty and silent all around me.
“Samantha!” I shouted. My voice died without an echo.
I knew she was gone.
I felt . . . too much to describe. Grief. Twisting, terrible grief. Frustration. Rage.
Fear. Fear that I had lost her this time forever.
I stared down the hall into pitch blackness. Only then did I remember . . . the name . . . She had given me the name . . . the address . . . The address about four hundred miles from here . . .
Well, that’s what I had come for, wasn’t it? That’s why she had led me here and that’s why I had come. For that name. For that address.
Go get them for me, Danny. Make them pay.
My face set, hard, my lips pressed tight together. My hands balled into fists at my side. At least there was that, I thought—at least she had given me th
at before she left. At least, wherever she was, I could do what she wanted now. Get the Fat Woman. Make her pay. Make sure she wouldn’t hurt anyone else. Make sure Samantha didn’t have to be afraid of her and her hired killers anymore.
I could put an end to this—finish it for good this time.
I lifted my eyes into the emptiness and darkness.
“Bobbi-Ray Jagger,” I whispered.
15
The Fat Woman
A NIGHT OF FEVERED half-sleep in a nearby motel—then I drove all the next day. The fog of withdrawal was still thick in my mind and the ghosts were everywhere. There were dead children watching from the fields outside the car window. There was Stark suddenly sitting in the passenger seat beside me, and just as suddenly gone. There was Samantha like a mirage drifting in and out of sight on the road ahead or in the rearview mirror—following after me or drawing me on, as I knew now she always had.
Sometimes—when my mind really misted over—there were only eyes and half-seen faces, gazing at me through the haze. Once or twice, it got so bad I had to pull the car to the side of the road and go to sleep. After an hour or so, I’d wake up smelling smoke—in a panic until I remembered: Oh yeah, the fire. A long time ago. Then I kept on driving—through the ghost-world of my withdrawal—toward the place where I would finally meet those ghosts face-to-face, finally find the creature I’d been hunting all these years.
But the hunt was different now than it had been. Everything was different—and I knew that everything would be different for me from this time on. Before, I’d been propelled into pursuit by a darkness in the back of my mind I didn’t even know was there. Now I knew. Now I had found my past, nightmare that it was. I had uncovered . . . well, I won’t say the events that had made me who I was, because now that I remembered my childhood, I could see that, in fact, I had always been pretty much who I was. But I had uncovered the events that had given me the language of my obsessions. Alexander. The burning house. Aunt Jane. Samantha. The past had given names and faces to my fears and desires. And now my fears and desires led me back into the past.