She walked, and nobody on the campus glanced at her—not police, not students, not professors.
Finally she thought of Mr. Heddig, with whom Dad went fishing a few times a year. The men also liked to go to a wilderness lodge for a long weekend. Alice had sometimes gone along. It wasn’t like any wilderness she’d ever imagined: The motel room had a Jacuzzi. Alice liked a wilderness that came with a Jacuzzi.
Mr. Heddig traveled a great deal for business. Alice had been to his house the times they went fishing. He’s been divorced forever, thought Alice, so there can’t be anybody else home. He’ll certainly be away during the day, and if he’s out of town, I’m all set.
Alice was desperately hungry, but her few dollars and her credit cards were in the backpack in Mr. Rellen’s custody.
Alice crossed the huge campus safely and cut through an even larger parking lot than Westtown Mall’s, serving a total of nine superstores like Home Depot and Office Max.
People were buying outdoor stuff: barbecues and lawn chairs and flats of flowers and pink flamingos. They did not dress up to do this. Women and men in sweatsuits pushed massive metal shopping carts into which they dumped pet food and building supplies. Dumpy Alice looked just fine.
Alice went to The Brick Oven, where they usually gave away free slices of bread to entice you to buy the whole loaf. Sure enough, they handed her a slab of soft hot bread, and yes, Alice wanted a whole loaf, or ten, but she had no money. She went into Best Price Foods and checked every aisle for food samples and had two crackers with a new cheese spread and one slice of hot dog about the size of a quarter. It was all she could do not to lick the table.
She walked on out, holding her books, as if every schoolgirl routinely stopped in for cheese on Thursday morning.
Was it really still morning?
Was it really only one day since the chase began?
Half a mile past the superstores, as she walked briskly down a sidewalk, alone and exposed, she saw Kelsey. Kelsey, whose parents would rather she had lice than miss a class. Kelsey was cutting school. Kelsey’s dad was driving.
Alice hunched down into her books. She tried to look heavy. It worked. She really was a different person. Gone the thin, graceful girl with long, shiny, swinging hair. Alice had vanished. Even her best friend did not know her.
It took her the afternoon to walk to Mr. Heddig’s.
He lived on a dead-end road in an old, failed development, where only a dozen houses had ever gone up, had sold poorly and at a loss, and where people did not keep up their yards. Her father could not stand this sort of thing: People should edge their walks and prune their bushes and clean their gutters. It was surprising that he would be close friends with a guy who never thought of that stuff.
The woods had grown thick where people had given up mowing, and hedges planted years before had become green monsters separating each house from its neighbor. Mr. Heddig’s house not only looked vacant today, it looked as if it had been vacant for months.
Suppose Mr. Heddig was inside catching up on his sleep after some jet-lag trip to Japan?
Suppose Alice broke in and he kept a gun by the bed and shot her?
Suppose she just knocked on the door and said, Hi, Mr. Heddig, it isn’t true, I didn’t do it, please let me sleep on a real bed and don’t call the police.
Alice knocked on the door.
Chapter 9
NOBODY CAME TO THE door.
Alice walked around the garage and from a hook hidden beneath a hanging light fixture, she took the spare house key. The weekend of the fishing trip, Mr. Heddig had carefully shown her its location in case she ever needed it.
Inside, his house was dusty and dry, as if it were all attic. It was a split level, and Alice went up the half-stair to the living room/kitchen part. Everything about the house felt tired. Seats sagged and curtains drooped. No wonder Mr. Heddig went fishing a lot. Who would want to stay here?
The only place that looked used was the kitchen counter, littered with the usual calendar, phone, newspaper clippings, Post-Its, business cards, pencils…and car keys.
In a split level, the garage is beneath the bedrooms. Alice went down the two sets of half-stairs, through a murky rec room, and into the garage.
Yes. There was a vehicle to go with the keys on the kitchen counter. It was a miserable excuse for a car. An ancient Dodge Dart, mustard yellow and rusted, vinyl upholstery baked clear of color and dashboard cracked. A metal dog grate had been fastened between the backseat and the driver’s seat, but there was no longer any sign of a dog.
Alice wished there were a dog. She could use a warm, cuddly, tail-wagging body right now.
Alice turned off the garage light and went back upstairs. She was amazed that these dark unknown spaces did not frighten her. Perhaps you reached an upper level for fright, where there wasn’t more of it.
She checked the refrigerator. Mr. Heddig definitely ate all his meals out. A stick of butter. Half a jar of spaghetti sauce with mold on it. Ketchup, mustard, pickles, jam, artichokes in a tiny jar, like dead squid.
And a twelve-pack of Coke.
She yanked the pull tab on one can and drank eagerly.
There was food in the freezer, but she could not bring herself to thaw a hamburger patty in the microwave and cook it. There was food on the shelves, but she did not want shredded wheat without milk, and she did not want to heat a can of soup. It was bad enough to be trespassing, but what if Mr. Heddig came home and found her stirring ingredients, setting the table?
Mr. Heddig’s kitchen phone was white, the only bright object in the house.
Mom, she thought blurrily.
The phone was in her hand before she could argue with it, but again Alice was not ready to talk with Mom.
If I call Daddy’s house, she thought, I’ll get his voice on the answering machine. I can still hear Daddy talk. He’s dead, but I can still call him up and he’ll say who he is, even though he isn’t.
Unbearable.
She flipped open the phone book and looked up the billing number. The service person answered so cheerily that Alice knew this woman was small and chipper and had just had her hair done and was looking forward to her favorite TV show that night. “How may I help you?” asked the happy phone person.
Let’s see, thought Alice. Money, car, plane ticket, mother, angel…“I have a billing problem,” she said. “There’s a long-distance charge to my phone and I don’t recognize the number. Would you please look up 399-8789 and tell me who I called?”
“Surely!” said the operator happily.
It’s that easy! thought Alice. They’ll tell me whose phone it was that Dad called from, and then I’ll know who his killer is, and then—
“And what number is it charged to, please?” asked the operator.
Alice’s heart sank. The supposedly incorrect bill would be brought up on the computer screen, so the problem could be corrected. But this was also to make sure Alice had a right to the information. There was no bill on which 399-8789 had showed up as a long-distance call. Since Dad’s number also began 399, she couldn’t give that number to the operator. In spite of how far she had hiked today, Mr. Heddig’s phone wasn’t long distance to 399, either.
Alice opened Mr. Heddig’s address book and read off a phone number at random.
The cheery voice was puzzled. “I don’t recognize those digits,” she said. “Are you in the right area code?”
“I’m so sorry,” said Alice, and she hung up.
I have no weapons, thought Alice. She called her father’s number. After three rings, her father’s voice said, “Hi! You’ve reached Marc Robie and Alice Robie! We can’t come to the phone right now, but please leave us a message and we’ll get back to you.”
No, Daddy, thought Alice. You won’t get back.
Alice put a dish towel over her face and bit it, and scrunched the ends of the towel in her fists, and tightened her fingers until the joints hurt. Little creaking sounds came out of her, as if she had ru
sted from tears and didn’t work very well anymore.
She punched in the code to listen to the messages waiting for her father. There was only one. A person who hadn’t been listening to his radio, or else lived in another state, said, “James here, Marc. I’ve been checking the chat room, and there are quite a few responses. Why aren’t you logging on? What’s happening? How come you haven’t gotten in touch? Do you have plans for the weekend? Call me as soon as you’re back, Marc.”
Plans for the weekend. Dad had planned to take Alice to the movies, and they would have popcorn drenched in butter and large orange sodas, and afterward they would critique the actors and talk about which movie they’d see next time.
That, then, was death. When your plans for the weekend didn’t matter. When your plans for your life didn’t matter, because you would not be there.
Alice hauled herself up to the bedrooms but could not bring herself to lie directly on a bed. It would be like Goldilocks, and the Three Bears would find her.
In the bathroom was a linen closet. Dad had one set of white sheets, which he took straight out of the dryer and put back on the bed. Mom had sheets with flowers and sheets with lace and sheets in dusty rose, sheets in cotton and flannel. Mr. Heddig just had stuff crammed between shelves.
Alice tugged at the wrinkled mess, getting an ugly peach stripe with yellow and blue dots. It was the kind of reject that traveled from one tag sale to another. But it was clean. She wrapped herself up like a mummy and shuffled down the tiny hall to peek in the bedrooms. She rejected the king-sized bed because it must be Mr. Heddig’s.
The second bedroom was used for storage.
The third bedroom had absolutely nothing in it but a bare mattress. “Have a lot of overnight guests, Mr. Heddig?” Alice mumbled. She flopped flat on the mattress, safe in her sheet, sobbed once, and was asleep.
When she woke up, it was dark.
She woke cleanly, without confusion, and without fear. Through the window, stars glittered with unusual clarity: separate tiny speeches from heaven.
Alice scrambled her sheet into its original mess and went into the bathroom. She pulled the shade down so she could turn on the light. Then she stuffed the sheet back onto its shelf. She brushed her teeth with her finger and Mr. Heddig’s toothpaste. On the bathroom window was a little plastic sign announcing that the house was wired to prevent robbery.
Alice was glad that she had not seen that when she let herself in. Either the sign was fake or the system was off. At least she could be sure there was no alarm on the miserable old Dart.
Alice felt her way down the three sets of half-stairs and into the garage. Even though she was pretty sure no neighbor could see this house, and pretty sure the neighbors were asleep anyway, she wanted to stay dark and invisible.
This was not the kind of place with an automatic garage door. She hoisted it from the inside. The blackness of night came in, like snakes around her ankles. There was rustling in the trees, and she thought of rabid raccoons staggering over to sink their teeth into her. She tried not to give in to stupid fears (not when she had so many rational fears to call upon), and as she struggled with the heavy garage door, a strong yellow light burst on, like a gunshot without the gun.
Alice screamed, but caught her scream in time, choking on it, so it was a half-scream.
Mr. Heddig must be home! He had come home while she was asleep. He had heard her prowling around in his house and turned on the spotlight.
Paralyzed in blazing light, Alice was on exhibit for the rabid raccoon or the armed Mr. Heddig. She could not hold the garage door up any longer. Either she had to let go and it would crash down, or she had to shove with all her might, to slide the door into ceiling position. Alice shoved. The door squealed. She was so afraid of the rabid raccoon that she could not bring herself to hide in the bushes, and so afraid of Mr. Heddig and his shotgun she could not bring herself to hide in the garage.
But nothing happened.
No shout. No footsteps. No door opening.
The light, she realized at last, was a motion sensor.
Mr. Heddig was not home. There was no shotgun and no rabid raccoon.
To test her theory, she walked across the front lawn, and sure enough, a spotlight by the door came on. Alice might as well have been playing ball in a night stadium.
Nobody came to the door or yelled.
Alice stopped worrying about the neighbors. If they saw the lights go on, that was all they’d see—the lights going on.
Alice got into the Dart, backed it out, put it in park, climbed out of the car and closed the garage door from the outside. The act of facing the wheel, the act of her feet on pedals, the act of latching her seat belt, calmed her.
Alice drove away.
She drove away in a car that belonged to another person. She could no longer pretend to be a little girl who had made a silly decision. She was a young woman who had knowingly stolen a car.
Alice had never driven in the dark. She was unnerved at how little she could see. She had to guide herself by the single yellow line in the center of the road. There were no side lines, so she couldn’t tell where the edge of the road was, and her headlights seemed to point at the wrong thing, as if they or she needed to be lined up differently.
How quickly the car covered ground. Half a day’s walking was minutes in a car.
As she got back into the city, lights were everywhere: every pole, every corner, every building. Alice had the roads to herself. She got lost twice because the glare of the lights and the silence of the streets confused her. She wondered what time it was. The Dart was so stripped down it didn’t even have a clock. It didn’t even have a radio!
She found her way to Dad’s.
She paused by the condo mailboxes, which were on the left side of the entrance, so the driver could pull up next to his box and take the mail without getting out of the car. The spare key was still taped to the inside top of the box where you couldn’t see it, could only feel it. She peeled it off. The Scotch tape felt dry and yellow against her thumb.
She pulled into Dad’s car-length driveway.
Her headlights illuminated bright yellow tape around the rim of the front door. The tape would not stop her from getting in, but it would certainly be visible that somebody had broken the police seal.
Alice wondered if it would scare her to be in the condo, where Dad had been dropped to the floor, as if it wouldn’t hurt him. Would the ghost of her father linger in his bedroom?
There was nothing she’d like more than some ghost of Daddy.
Alice put the key into the garage door instead, and it opened, softly—and there was a car there.
For a moment Alice wanted to scream, but then she realized it was Dad’s Blazer. Somebody had brought it home. Alice drove Mr. Heddig’s Dodge Dart into the space that belonged to the Corvette, got out, put the garage door back down, and turned the handle to lock it securely. She was home.
Right away she wanted her toothbrush.
She moved quietly through the condo, turning on no lights, feeling her way, wondering if the police had been smart enough to leave a cop here, just in case; wondering if she would touch living flesh when she reached for her toothbrush.
But she didn’t, and the bathroom was an interior room without windows, so when she had shut the door, she turned on the light, and the ordinariness of a bathroom she knew was enough to make a person weep, so she wept.
Then she turned off the light and edged over to her father’s desk. In utter darkness, she felt the shapes and squares of his computer setup, his files and notebooks. Around her the loneliness expanded and pressed against her skin. Her hands trembled like little puppets.
She couldn’t turn on the computer where it sat now. Even with the blinds pulled, the glow would be visible through the living room windows. Condo neighbors knew nothing about each other, but they certainly knew there’d been a murder here. She must give them nothing to notice.
She could unplug the computer, and
lug it and the keyboard and screen one by one to her bathroom. Plug them in where your hair dryer or razor went. Shut the door, turn on the light, and work sitting on the bathmat. For a minute this seemed rational, but then she remembered there was no telephone outlet in the bathroom, and she was not going to use the Internet without a phone line.
She went into her room and pulled her favorite big white blanket off the bed. Rigging it as a tent over her head and the desk, she went to work beneath the folds. The world consisted of Alice and the screen.
Alice booted up. The computer screen gave her the time. Two-thirty-eight A.M.
She put in Dad’s password and brought up his address book. She did a search for James, then for Jamie, then for Jim. There were six. Four had E-mail addresses. No last name was familiar.
She wished Dad had kept a list of the cars everybody drove: then she could look up Lumina minivan. Who out there was attracted to the spaceship look? But that was the kind of thing Dad simply knew by heart.
Then she steeled herself. She would write to her mother by E-mail, and this would be the real thing: From Alice: To Mom.
She began to type in her usual careless way, hitting wrong keys.
Mom i did not write that message you got. the person who killed dad wrote it. how could you belive it anyway? you know i adore daddy and i would never hurt him and fort aht matter i would never hurt anybody else either! you did the right thing claling the police because if dad had still been alive he needed an ambulance i didn’t even know he was there, whoever it was came in twith a key and i hid under the corvette because i thought he was scary a murderer or something. i was right, but it wasn’t of me, it was of dad. he must have killed dad someplace else and brough t his body into the condo and i don’t know how he did that, because dad would have been hgeavy and hard to move, but dad had called me just beofre that happened and told me to take a computer disk and drive the corvette to meet him at salem river yhou know where we always went for ice cream and i almost called you for advice because it was such a weird thing for dad to say—drive the corvette when he never let me touch it and i don’t even have a license—so i knew it was very important—and i didn’t call you because youd say never and i didn’t want to let dad down. mom i did not know what had happened int he apartment. the intruder left and drove away and i got out from under the corvette and i left and drove away. i didn’t look for a body, it wasn’t me, mom. dont have the funeral without me, mom. i have to be there, i know what dad would want, and i’m the one who will miss him i’m the one who loved him. not you. i miss him so much its hard to think, i want him to tell me what to do and he isn’t alive to tell any of us anything, then when i found out on the radio about dad anjd about how you believed i had done it and about how you had a confession—well you dont. its something the killer typed and i dont know how he knew but he did.