Man of Wax (6 page)

I was listening but at the same time I wasn’t. I was remembering all the nights I’d spent on the computer in my den, while Jen was fast asleep. I’d always done so well at cleaning up my tracks, of deleting files and the history. Never once did Jen suspect anything, just as never once did I try telling her what I really did late at night.
 

“It’s nothing to be ashamed about. We all have our needs, our dark desires. We all have our fetishes we never want to tell anybody else about, not even our wives or girlfriends. It’s what makes us human, Ben, what sets us apart from the rest of the animals in the world.”
 

“How ... how do you know all of this?”
 

“It’s possible to know everything about anyone, if you have the proper resources. Your full name is Benjamin Jacob Anderson. You’re thirty-two years old. You were born into a poor family, your father a painter, your mother a dry cleaner. You went to high school in York, Pennsylvania. You got pretty good grades, graduated with a three-point-four. You ended up going to Penn State’s York campus for English, because you wanted to be a lawyer. But you were only there for two semesters. Though, actually, that’s not quite true, is it? You went one full semester, then only a few weeks into the second before dropping out. Something happened that made you question everything. What happened there? I already know, but I want you to tell me. Come on, Simon says tell me what happened.”
 

I opened my mouth, started to speak, shut it. Just kept my attention on the road.
 

“I understand it’s difficult for you,” Simon said. “Her name was Michelle Delaney. She was a sophomore. She was at the same party you went to, she and her boyfriend. I’ll at least give you that much. But tell me what her boyfriend did. Tell me what
you
did.”
 

“There’s ... there’s no way you can know that. There’s no goddamn way.”
 

“Keep telling yourself that, Ben. Keep telling yourself that none of this is real.”

On his last couple words his voice had made a strange sound. I glanced at the phone, saw that it only had one bar left.
 

“You’re cutting out.”
 

“Am I? Well, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet. I should go now anyhow. Give you some time to think. Turn the phone off in the meantime. I don’t intend on talking to you for the next couple hours. Besides, all you have is driving ahead of you. Stop for gas when you need it, buy whatever you’d like, but remember: I see what you see, I hear what you hear, I know what you know. Use the map you bought at the gas station to get you where you need to be headed. Turn the phone back on when you start passing through Doyle.”
 

The road was beginning to straighten out some. Ahead the endless stretch of trees of one of California’s many national forests rose in the distance.
 

“Where am I going?”
 

For some reason I didn’t expect Simon to answer me, but he said, “The Biggest Little City in the World: Reno, Nevada.”
 

“And what”—I swallowed again, my throat still dry—“why am I going there?”
 

Again, I didn’t expect him to answer. I expected him to give me some bullshit about how it wasn’t any of my business to know. But then, right before he disconnected, he told me, that grin once more palpable in his voice.
 

“There’s a young woman there just dying to meet you.”

10

From where I’d entered Six Rivers National Park near Willow Creek, to where I finally started seeing signs for Doyle, California, roughly six hours passed. I took 299 all the way to Redding, the first true solid sign of modern Americana in the past couple hours. I stopped for gas and then took a long piss in the bathroom, having downed both bottles of water. I stocked up on snacks while I was inside, more pretzels and soda and even some beef jerky. I also bought a Snickers bar, if not to spite Simon, then to at least make amends for the one I’d lifted and then eaten. The wrapper—the only evidence of my crime—lay in the trash out by the pumps, along with the pretzel bag and the empty pack of smokes. At the counter, I thought long and hard, and asked the girl for a carton.
 

Outside, I paused by the payphones. I considered calling Marshall again. Just what I would tell him I still wasn’t sure—Simon saying
I hear what you hear
kept reverberating in my head—but I wanted to tell him something. Maybe have him stop by the house, just in case, though I knew that would be a waste of time. Hadn’t I heard Jen’s voice? Hadn’t I heard her screaming?
 

They cut off my
—
 

Yes, Jen? Yes, my darling? Just what the fuck did they cut off?
 

Besides the obvious, I wished she’d never gotten that much out, because in the last six hours all I’d been doing was filling in the blank. While I’d originally thought there wouldn’t be that many possibilities, I quickly realized that wasn’t true. Seems that when you’re under extreme pressure and stress, your mind will think up anything.
 

Then again, I wasn’t being quite truthful with myself. There was something else I’d been thinking a lot about, too, a girl I hadn’t really known in college but a girl who’d haunted me ever since. Michelle Delaney. Son of a bitch, how the hell did Simon know about her? The only person I’d ever told was Jen; even my parents, when they asked why I had dropped out of school, were given some bullshit response that it just wasn’t for me.
 

Another annoying revelation that had dawned on me in the past few hours was I’d been kidding myself before, back in room six of the Paradise Motel, waiting to open up that bathroom door. I’d called it a nightmare and said I’d never had anything like that before, but it was a lie. Nightmares came to me every so often, most times while I was asleep, other times while I was awake. A nightmare so clear and precise it was as if I were reliving the scene again and again. I’d see her there, I’d see Michelle Delaney, and I’d be forced to watch no matter how hard I wanted to wake up. It seemed, just like in real life, I had no control over the matter.
 

Two hours later, now on I-395, I turned on the phone. Doyle was just another mile or so away.
 

For some reason I expected Simon to call in a minute or two of having turned the phone on, but he didn’t. Instead it was in another ten minutes, as I was entering the Doyle State Wildlife Area, that the phone started vibrating.
 

He said, “Having fun yet?” I didn’t answer, just waited, and it took him a few beats to say, “Oh come on, Ben, don’t be like that. We’re friends.”
 

“We are not friends.”
 

“Fine then. We’re acquaintances. Does that sound better?”
 

It was close to seven o’clock in the evening. The light had already been retreating for an hour now, the sky darkening. I’d never driven so long before in my life. Both my legs were starting to cramp; my neck was starting to hurt. I’d done only one road trip with my parents when I was younger—we’d gone down to Orlando, after my parents had scraped enough extra money over the years to do something nice for my birthday—but then I’d been in the backseat, simply a passenger, and had slept or read comic books most of the way.
 

“Ben, it won’t do you any good to not talk to me. After all, I am Simon, and what I say goes.”
 

“What do you want now?”
 

“Now? Now I just want to talk. I figure since you’ve been driving so long you might be feeling lonely.”
 

I didn’t say anything and just continued driving, gripping the wheel tightly with my left hand as I kept the phone glued to my ear with my right.
 

Simon said, “So, Ben, I’ve been wondering something. I want to know why, after having such ambitions to become a lawyer, you instead went back and worked with your father as a painter. Quite a different field of work arguing cases in front of a judge and jury as opposed to mixing paints because the owners don’t exactly like the tint of the beige from the can, isn’t it?”
 

“People are going to realize we’re gone, you know. I might not be a lawyer, but Jen certainly is, and her firm’s probably wondering right now why she didn’t show. The same with Casey’s preschool.”
 

“Relax, Ben. All of that has already been taken care of. You really think we’d forget something like that? Now answer my question. Why painting?”
 

“I just—” I shook my head. “I don’t know. It was something to do. I’m good at it.”
 

“I don’t buy it. There has to be more to it than that.”
 

The highway stretched out before me. Cars coming in my direction in the other lane, cars in front of me, cars behind me: they were all headed home, to a friend’s, out to eat, to maybe their own work. None were in the same position as me, their family held hostage, some kind of madman on the other end of a cell phone that wasn’t even theirs, that instead belonged to whoever had set this fucking thing up. For some reason, I hated each and every one of them.
 

I closed my eyes for a moment, pictured the one summer when I was a boy and went up to my father painting the backdoor. Heard the question I asked him, listened to his response.
 

“You know, Ben,” Simon said, “it won’t do your family any good giving me the silent treatment. I’m just trying to make conversation anyway, to ease the tension. It doesn’t really matter to me what makes you tick.”
 

“Then why’d you ask?”
 

Simon didn’t answer, but I could see that grin there on his goddamned face, and it made me grit my teeth. I pinched the cell phone between my ear and shoulder again, gripped the steering wheel with my left hand, while with my right I reached over and found the opened pack of cigarettes on the passenger seat.
 

Once I had the Marlboro placed in my mouth and lit, I said, “Let me talk to my wife again.”
 

“I don’t think so. You’ve already talked with her.”
 

“My daughter then.”
 

Silence. Then, “Hmm.”
 

I kept my eyes on the road, following the glow of red taillights, my foot lifting off the gas pedal.
 

“What?” I asked, my voice all of a sudden more cautious and tense than before. I flicked the cigarette out the window. “What is it?”
 

Simon said, “It’s just your daughter,” and paused. Took a few seconds, as if thinking of something. There was complete silence on his end, which made me wonder if maybe I’d lost the connection, or if maybe he’d hung up. Finally he said, “You haven’t checked the trunk yet, have you?”

11

There was no real shoulder along this particular spot of 395 but I pulled over anyway. Except pulled over isn’t quite right, seeing as how once I threw the phone down I gripped the wheel tight and slammed on the brakes. The Dodge protested immediately, its brakes screeching, the back of the car fishtailing. Luckily nobody was tailgating me, or else there may have been one ugly crash. As it was, a tractor-trailer was about one hundred yards behind, its driver not at all impressed with my driving skills, because a low horn blasted out right as it passed.
 

I barely noticed. Instead I just sat there, staring forward at the dash, and wondered just what I really wanted to do now. My mind had been feeding me blurry images since the beginning of what might be in the trunk, and now, with Simon’s help, those images had begun to gain focus.
 

More cars passed by on my left, what seemed just inches away. I ignored them all, debating what I wanted to do, until finally I cut the ignition and grabbed the key, started opening the door but then heard the rush of oncoming traffic and hesitated. Good thing too, because somebody else decided they weren’t impressed, and another horn shouted out into the night. I waited until there was a break in the cars and got out and started toward the rear of the Dodge.
 

“Please no, please no, please no,” I whispered.
 

More cars passed by on the highway, the rush even louder now that I was standing just feet away from them. The sky was clear, the temperature cool, and somewhere in the grass by the trees insects chirped.
 

And I kept whispering, “Please no, please no, please no.”
 

Somehow I made myself stop. I don’t know how long it took, how many minutes (or hours) passed, but eventually I fell quiet and just stood there in front of the trunk. The key was in my right hand, hovering just inches away from the lock. Nothing was holding me back, nothing except the images that flashed through my mind. Like a series of jump cuts, I saw my daughter’s battered body, her tangled arms and legs, her smashed face. Like she’d been hit by a tank and then placed in this trunk, just waiting for her daddy to bring her back out.
 

When I decided enough time had passed that it was clear I was stalling, I lowered my hand holding the key. It slid right into the lock. A second went by, another second, and I turned it. There was an unsatisfying click as it unlatched. I was aware that the trunk had risen just a bit, whatever springs there were trying to force it to lift up into the air.
 

I wasn’t ready for that quite yet.
 

And so I stood there, holding it down, traffic sporadically surging past me. There were houses close by, many with lights on in their living rooms and kitchens, and in one of the backyards a dog started barking. The insects in the grass kept up their constant symphony.
 

I opened the trunk, took a step back, and stared down at the bloodied remains of my three-and-a-half-year-old daughter.