Bad Things (24 page)

of paper, two-thirds covered with type, a low-quality photograph re-

produced at the bottom. The text concerned the murder in Berlin

in October 1995 of a man called Peter Ridenhauer, found dead in

his apartment from multiple stab wounds. Ridenhauer had been un-

der long-term investigation for sex traffi cking: enticing or coercing

women with promises of reputable and highly paid work in upmarket

European countries, then taking possession of their passports before

forcing the girls to become involved in prostitution—usually easing

the transition by causing them to be addicted to heroin, which he

supplied. Some eventually limped home years later, many overdosed

or disappeared, all could be expected to undergo twelve or more

clients a day, many of whom had tastes that could not be slaked in

the company of more voluntary working girls. The primary suspect

in Ridenhauer’s death—a girl formerly under his control, glimpsed

entering his apartment with him on the evening of the murder—

disappeared from Germany very soon afterward, and though the

case remained open it didn’t seem anyone was in a great hurry to

solve it.

The suspect’s name was Ilena Zaituc. The attached photograph

showed, without much doubt, a younger version of the woman I’d

visited in the hospital that morning.

My hands were trembling as I opened the door and walked back

out into the parking lot. I stood in the middle and held the piece of

paper up.

“Mistake,” I said, getting my lighter out.

I didn’t shout, but I said it loud and clear, and though my voice

felt guttural in my throat I knew the sound would carry. “If this is

supposed to make me think worse of her, it doesn’t.”

I held the lighter up to the document, and set fi re to it. When it

164 Michael Marshall

had caught, I let go, and the wind took it, fl ipping it away and up into

the air. The fl ame dodged and jerked like some tiny, fi erce spirit.

I thought I heard a noise then, back in the trees on the other side

of the road. It could have been a laugh, or a bird, or perhaps just a

branch cracking in the gathering wind. I took a few paces in its direc-

tion, and held my arms out wide and to my sides.

“Be my guest,” I said, and my voice did not sound like my own.

But nothing happened.

I considered calling Pierce but knew no good would come of it. I

thought about going to pay a visit on the Robertsons, but knew that

now—full of alcohol—was not the time. Who knows how long they’d

been saving this information about Ellen, without doing the obvi-

ous thing. If they’d simply wanted to be rid of her, they would have

turned her in. Therefore they wanted something else. This wasn’t

about the shortest route to a desired conclusion. Ellen was right. This

was about punishment, delivered slowly, and only when they consid-

ered the time was right. Harassment, in other words. Making the

most of discomfort. Extracting the full value from pulling out the

pins of someone’s life, one by one. I felt they should be dealt with in

the same way.

But then, when I realized what I was thinking, I tried to turn

from the idea as you would try to turn from reaching for that next

drink, the one you know will jam the cellar door so wide you’ll have

all the excuse you need to fall right in. So instead I sat in the motel

room in the dark, working through pot after pot of bad coffee, past

the point where I hoped I would not be too hungover the next day,

until I eventually fell asleep.

And woke again, three or four hours later.

The room was pitch-black. My head was thick and throbbing

B A D T H I N G S 165

with caffeine and waning alcohol, and I felt rusty with dehydration. I

seemed stuck to the chair, turned to wood or stone, unable to move.

Eventually I dragged myself to the bed but there was too much

noise to get back to sleep. The wind was howling outside now, the

roof drumming with rain. These sounds were at least constant, how-

ever, something that might in time slip below the threshold of aware-

ness. What I could not ignore was the branches once again clacking

and scraping against the back of the motel.

I got up and stumbled to the door. When I unlocked it and turned

the handle, the wind blew it back in at me, wrenching my wrist hard

enough to make me cry out.

I went outside and made my way down to the end of the block,

then around the corner, keeping under the eaves as much as possible,

but still getting quickly soaked. I made the turn around the back of

the hotel, knowing the irrational fury I was feeling had little to do

with windblown branches, but there was nothing else I could take it

out on right now—that there were some motherfucking twigs that

had scratched their last tonight.

I hunched my way along until I was close to where the back of my

room should be. I was only going to tackle that stretch. Other resi-

dents could do their own brute-force horticulture. But when I raised

my head, I stopped.

I was standing with one foot braced on the concrete base that ran

the length of the building, the other on the muddy grass. Ahead of

me, on my left, was the run of the back of the motel building. To the

right was the beginnings of the woods.

In between was a distance of about fi ve feet.

I stood staring at this until I was absolutely sure I was seeing

what I thought I was. Though the wind
was
whipping them back and

forth, and at least as strong as it had been anytime since I’d been in

Black Ridge, branches from these trees could not have been scraping

against the back of my room. They couldn’t reach.

Not tonight, nor on any other night.

166 Michael Marshall

And yet, I saw as I bent closer,
something
had evidently made con-

tact with the shingle cladding. There were marks in the wood there.

Evidently fresh, from the last few days, as the inner wood they had

revealed remained bright and clean. Scratch marks. Some short, oth-

ers a foot or so long and going every which way. There was no actual

shape to them that I could make out, but they reminded me of the

arrangement of twigs and branches I’d seen on the forest fl oor the

day before.

I turned and looked into the woods. With only the dim lights

from the top of the motel roof shining on them, you couldn’t see past

the fi rst ranks of trees. This turned the forest into something like a

black mirror, into which it seemed all too possible you might be able

to step.

Then I heard the sound of a phone ringing through the motel

wall. The phone in my room.

I hesitated, but turned from the forest and hurried back around to

the front side of the motel, slipping and nearly falling in the puddles.

The phone stopped ringing just as I got back into my room.

It rang again, however, two minutes later. I grabbed the handset.

“Brooke,” I said thickly. “You don’t want to do this.”

But there was no one there. The phone rang again at hourly in-

tervals throughout the night, and there was no one there then, ei-

ther, just a fault on the line that sounded like someone shouting short

words from a very long distance.

C H A P T E R 2 3

Sixty-two times. Sixty-three.

Sixty-four.

Standing in the freezing hallway, wearing only panties and a

bra. Shivering, her feet moving back and forward in little steps,

Carol knew exactly where she’d seen movement like this before.

In a zoo, in the long-ago late 1970s, a poor zoo, a Guantánamo for

mammals. A lone bear, its coat matted, in a cage that was too small

and didn’t look as though it had been cleaned in a long, long while.

On the way out, her dad complained. He gave the people at the

gate merry hell. He may even have written a letter when they got

home—he had said he would, and he generally carried through. But

it was too late by then. Carol had already seen the bear, up on its

hind legs, hanging on to the rusted chain-link fence, its feet mov-

ing back and forth in small, old-person shuffl es, back and forward,

forward and back. A bear lost in internal darkness, a bear having an

endless, slow-motion panic attack.

She had stared at it, gripping her father’s hand, knowing she

was seeing something wrong, that animals shouldn’t look like that.

No
animal.

Not even her.

168 Michael Marshall

Nearly thirty years later, but feeling no older, she pushed herself

back from the door lock. Again. It was just before two in the morn-

ing. She had been there an hour and a half.

Because it wasn’t even the fi rst set of sixty-four.

There had been nothing since the man in the library. No more

calls. No more notes. She didn’t think that meant they had gone

away. She had not called the police. A nonthreatening phone call and

a photo she could have taken herself would add up to squat in their

eyes, and generate nothing but scorn or, even worse, pity. You’d think

a single parent would evoke concern as a fi rst reaction, but that’s not

the way it goes. Especially not a woman.

Why would a woman in her thirties be living alone in the fi rst

place, unless there was something wrong with her? Unless she’d

proven too diffi cult and strange for a man to live with?

The letters on the chalkboard wouldn’t have made any difference,

even if she hadn’t furiously scrubbed them off—before realizing that

was an unbelievably dumb thing to do.

As soon as she had something concrete then
of course
she’d go to

the cops. But for now it was a case of hanging tough. Not panicking.

Holding the chaos at bay, as she had for nearly three years with no

help from anyone. Staying put and asking nothing of anyone other

than herself. Sometimes help from others comes at too high a cost.

She of all people knew that.

She forced herself to walk backward down the hallway. She was only

able to do this by promising the gods she wasn’t pretending to believe

the door was actually locked, just taking time out before restarting

the process. Beginning again, with renewed dedication and rigor. It

seemed like the lightbulb in the ceiling was fl ickering as she passed

beneath it, but that was just tiredness. Just the headache that stretched

from ear to ear. Just. . .

. . . oh, who was she
kidding
.

B A D T H I N G S 169

The fucking bulb was fl ickering.

Even Tyler had noticed it, on the way to bed, hours before. She’d

told him it just meant the bulb was about to blow, which caused some

confusion as he was only familiar with the concept of blowing in rela-

tion to birthday candles. So their bedtime story was all about a lucky

lightbulb called Leroy, who lived in a lovely house with a mommy

and her little boy, whose birthday it was tonight and so he was getting

ready to blow out all the candles on his cake, and tra la la.

Tyler was sleeping now, but judging by the last couple of nights

he’d wake up soon rather than later. Her normally sound sleeper was

suddenly all over the place again. And what could
that
mean, if not. . .

The bulb was fl ickering. The drawers in the kitchen felt stiff, and a little
too hard to pull out. It was darker under the chairs than it should be.

Were these things true anywhere except in her own mind? She’d

never been sure. Except for the bulb. That
had
to be real, unless Tyler was only in her mind, too, and that was a road she wasn’t going down,

not now, not tonight, not ever.

Of course, it could be that the bulb really
was
just about to give

up the ghost. Could be.

But that didn’t make any difference. The last days had been like

falling into a shaft whose infi nite depth—the better for falling down,

my dear—did not negate the certain knowledge of sharpened stakes

at the bottom. The only way to stop yourself toppling is to dig your-

self in. Any way, any how.

She stood in the kitchen and knew her feet were still moving but

didn’t know how to stop them. Movement was now their natural state,

as a heart knew nothing but how to beat. Unless you stopped it, of

course, but all the knives in the kitchen had been wrapped tightly in

a towel and stowed way in back of the yard, as of yesterday afternoon.

There had been a time when . . . but that time wasn’t now. She’d got

through that period and it wasn’t her fault it was happening again. She’d

done everything she could, built her walls, and then John had fucked

things up. By calling her? Or merely by going there, going back?

170 Michael Marshall

She didn’t know. Rationally, she believed the former. You could

sit and chew that one over with a therapist (assuming you could afford

one) and he’d nod sagely and make notes, and say he could see how it

could have redirected her attention to a bottomless grief she’d never ex-

punged, and charge you a hundred bucks, happy he’d been of service.

But she knew what
she
believed. What her faith told her. After