Perfect Nightmare (17 page)

Chapter Thirty-five

W
hen Steve Marshall had accepted Russ Doran’s invitation for a quick drink after work, he fully intended to take only a moment at the end of a hectic day and unwind with a good friend. But the martini had both cooled and soothed him, and when Russ ordered another one, Steve figured one more wouldn’t hurt. While they waited for the second round, he excused himself, went to the men’s room, and while at the urinal, caught sight of himself in the mirror over the sink.

He didn’t just look tired—he looked at least ten years older than he had a week ago, and in the space between his eyebrows there were deep creases that barely vanished even when he stretched the skin with his fingers.

He didn’t need another martini; he needed to go home.

The problem was, he didn’t want to go home.

Home, in the last week, had become so completely different from the wondrously happy place he and Kara and Lindsay had shared since the day Lindsay had been born that it no longer felt like a place of refuge at all. Lindsay’s absence hung over it like a suffocating blanket, and every moment he was in the house reminded him of his terrible impotence in the face of what had happened.

He should have protected his family—his little girl—and he had failed.

Failed so utterly, so paralytically, that Kara had taken charge, focusing like a laser on doing whatever she thought would bring their baby back.

But Steve had a deep, gnawing feeling about Lindsay, a feeling so bad that he couldn’t even confide it to his wife.

Instead, he had to keep it inside, where it was not simply festering, but now consuming him. And he was certain that if he breathed even a word of his feeling to Kara—that they were never going to see their daughter again—she wouldn’t simply cry or try to talk him out of it.

No, she would be furious at his lack of faith, and call him a traitor, and a bad father, and a terrible husband.

And deep down inside, he knew she was right.

He
was
a bad father, and he
was
a terrible husband, because no matter how hard he’d tried to do everything he could for them, to make their lives as perfect as possible, he’d failed.

He’d failed, and Lindsay was gone, and the part of him that didn’t already feel dead didn’t really want to go on living, either.

Russ Doran knew about Lindsay’s disappearance, of course, and he had let Russ think he was doing a nice thing by taking him out for a drink and a little distraction before he went home.

But there it was again: he didn’t want to go home. And that one simple fact left him hating himself.

He returned from the men’s room, telling himself to lay down a couple of bills, take a sip from the final drink, and go home to Kara, no matter how painful it might be. Yet by the time he reached the table, the martini looked so frosty in its fresh glass that he found himself unable to resist it.

Steve sat down.

Before he knew it, that martini was gone and another was in its place.

This wasn’t good. If he didn’t leave now, the last train would be gone, and there would be no choice but to spend the night in the apartment by himself.

When Russ Doran ordered still another round, Steve said nothing, and slowly the alcohol began to numb him. And then, in the middle of the fifth martini, Russ pointed up at the television screen above the bar.

“Look at that,” he said softly, then frowned at Steve. “Shouldn’t you be there?”

Steve looked up to see Lindsay’s photograph splashed across the television screen, and a moment later the camera pulling back to show a great mass of people, each of them holding a candle, walking slowly down a street in Camden Green.

Kara.

Dawn D'Angelo.

The cheerleading coach—what was her name? Spandler.

And all his friends and neighbors, plus at least half the rest of the town.

And he’d completely forgotten that the vigil was tonight.

He stood up so fast he almost tipped over his stool. He fumbled in his wallet and threw a couple of twenties down.

“Gotta go, Russ. See you tomorrow.”

“Whoa, wait a minute,” Russ said, grabbing onto his wrist. “Are you going to
drive
?”

“I’ve got to get home,” Steve said, and gently but firmly pulled away from Russ’s grasp.

Five minutes later he was in the Hertz office on West Fifty-seventh Street, and ten minutes after that he was on the road.

Maybe—just maybe—he could get there before it was over.

Chapter Thirty-six

K
ara stood in her kitchen, closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of talking, laughing, eating, and drinking.

The sounds of life.

The sounds of normality.

The sounds she hadn’t heard since Lindsay vanished.

And the sounds that Steve should be hearing but wasn’t.

A flicker of anger ignited inside her; a flicker she instantly doused, reminding herself that Steve was dealing with the situation the only way he could, that she couldn’t help him, and neither, she suspected, could any of the people who had gathered here tonight. But it still would have been better for him to be here.

But he wasn’t.

She opened her eyes to see the roomful of friends—and people who until tonight had only been acquaintances—and suddenly, gratitude replaced the fear that had all but overwhelmed her; calm replaced the frenetic anxiety that had gripped her since the moment of Lindsay’s disappearance. If only Steve were with her. . . .

S
teve gripped the steering wheel and hunched forward in the driver’s seat of the tiny rented Hyundai, his frustration growing by the second. He needed to get home, and he needed to get home
now.
But traffic wasn’t moving.

Someone who must have found his driver’s license in a Cracker Jack box was holding everything up on the on ramp to the Sagtikos Parkway—maybe he should have just taken 25A all the way and not even bothered with the Long Island Expressway. But this time of night the expressway should have been clear, and he’d figured—

Who cared what he’d figured?

He pounded the horn, then cut around to the on-ramp shoulder, right of the lane of stalled traffic. Sure enough, at the top was an old man afraid to merge into the lane of northbound traffic.

Steve gunned the little car and darted from the shoulder into traffic.

But traffic was even worse when the Sagtikos turned into the Sunken Meadow above Northern State Parkway. It seemed as if every oversized SUV on Long Island was trying to get to Camden Green tonight, and Steve took a fresh grip on the steering wheel, bore down on the gas pedal, and swerved into a gap between two huge vehicles, each occupied only by a driver. One way or another, he was going to get home to Kara.

What had he been thinking, going out drinking with Russ while Kara walked in the vigil by herself?

He slipped between two more SUVs and hit the horn as he passed yet another one on the right, then veered back into the left lane and hit the accelerator as he saw the highway finally open up ahead of him.

Finally free—at least for a minute or two—he fumbled in his coat pocket until he found his cell phone and flipped it open. With one hand on the wheel, he punched the thumb of his other hand on the speed-dial key for his home number.

Raindrops began to splat on the windshield.

Where was the wiper control?

Just as Kara answered, a town car came out of nowhere and passed Steve on the right, sending a cascade of mist over his windshield, blinding him for a second.

Where the
hell
were the wipers?

“Hello?” Kara’s voice crackled in his ear.

“Kara?”

“Steve?” Though the crackle was momentarily gone, her voice was now muffled by voices in the background. “Honey? Where are you?”

“I’m on my way home,” he said, raising his voice against the cacophony of the rain on the roof of the car and the crackling in the cell connection. Holding the steering wheel with his knees, he twisted a switch on one of the stalks protruding from the steering column.

The headlights went out, and Steve swore under his breath as he tried to switch them back on.

“Honey?” he heard Kara say, her own voice now rising, too. “I can’t hear you. You’re breaking up. Are you driving?”

“I’m on my way home,” he said.

The rain turned into a pelting downpour, and every light beyond the windshield turned into a dazzling blur.

“Steve?”

The last of the alcohol from the martinis he’d consumed surged into Steve’s bloodstream, and along with the alcohol came a wave of guilt. “Kara, I missed the vigil,” he said, his words slurring. “I’m sorry, honey, I’m so sorry—”

“Steve? You’re breaking up—I can’t understand you!”

As a Humvee suddenly loomed out of the darkness ahead on the right, the phone fell from Steve’s hand and dropped to the floor between the front seats. Instinctively reaching for it, Steve missed the beginning of the Humvee’s movement into his own lane, and by the time he looked up again, red lights were flooding his windshield.

His headlights! He’d never turned them back on!

Jerking the steering wheel and slamming on the brakes, he felt the car start to the left out of the oversized car’s path, and for an instant thought he was safe.

And in that instant, the tires lost their grip on the rain-slicked highway. The car spun out of control, hit the concrete divider, and flipped into the air.

In a moment of terrible clarity, Steve hoped Kara wouldn’t be able to hear what was coming next.

Then his windshield exploded as the car slammed against the support columns of an overpass and dropped to the ground upside down, its roof collapsing. Steve felt a terrible pain in his spine, and an instant later was surrounded by a dazzling white light—

And another instant later, the light, too, was gone.

W
hen the phone went dead, Kara moved into the laundry room, away from distraction and noise that only a moment ago had sounded so good to her and tried to call Steve back.

She got nothing more than his voice mail.

Maybe he was trying to call her again.

She hung up, waited almost a full minute, and tried again.

And again she got his voice mail.

Questions churned through her mind. Why was Steve driving home this late? And what would he be driving, anyway? He’d taken the train to work.

Maybe he caught a ride with someone else?

She set the cordless phone down on the washing machine and tried to sort out the pieces of words she’d heard him speak. She thought he’d been trying to apologize.

But there was something in his voice, even through the static . . .

She walked back into the living room but could no longer concentrate on anything anyone was saying to her; there were too many questions tumbling inside her head.

What was it he’d been trying to say? Where was he? Why was he driving?

None of it made any sense. There was something about the whole situation that wasn’t right. . . .

“Kara?” Phyllis D'Angelo’s voice penetrated her thoughts. She and Dawn were putting on their coats. “I’m sorry, but we’ve got to head home.”

Kara managed a smile. “Of course. Thank you so much for coming.” She turned to Dawn. “And for everything else, too.”

“We’re praying for Lindsay,” Dawn said.

“We’re praying for all of you,” Phyllis echoed.

“I know you are.” Kara walked them to the door, and as if their departure was a signal, everyone else began to drift out. Within five minutes everyone was gone except for Patrick Shields and Claire Sollinger, who remained seated on the living room sofa, apparently deep in conversation, which meant that despite her desire to sink down at the kitchen table with a hot cup of tea and wait for Steve to come home, she couldn’t.

Not as long as Claire and Patrick remained.

As soon as the door closed, though, Claire looked up and gave her an apologetic smile. “I think we’re overstaying our welcome,” she said, rising to her feet. “Come on, Patrick. Kara needs some peace and quiet.”

A moment later Kara found herself accepting yet one more hug and one more kiss on the cheek, this time from Claire Sollinger.

Then Patrick took her hand, and as she looked into his eyes, suddenly she knew. “It was you,” she whispered.

He frowned in apparent puzzlement, but his sister smiled knowingly. “I’ll meet you outside,” Claire said, and let herself out.

“You’re the one who put up the reward,” Kara said.

“What makes you think that?” Patrick asked, but his expression told her that she was right. The pain of his own loss was still clear in his face.

“Because you’re the only other person in town who understands. You’re the only one in town who could. You’re the only one who would.”

“I just want to see Lindsay come home to you,” he said.

“I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Seeing Lindsay home safe will be plenty of thanks.” Patrick impulsively leaned forward and put his arms around her. “Helping you helps me,” he went on. Then he released her, held her at arm’s length and forced a smile. “I’m really quite a selfish bastard.”

“I’ll never believe that,” Kara replied, but now she was smiling, too, though her tears were still flowing.

“Claire awaits,” Patrick said, and opened the door.

Claire stood on the front porch. “I just realized that you don’t have your car,” she said. “We’ll take you to it.”

Kara started to protest, then thought better of it. Better to get it now than wait for Steve or try to deal with it in the morning.

Five minutes later Claire dropped both of them at the high school, where Patrick insisted on following Kara home in his own car, just to make sure. She got into her cold Toyota, turned the heater on full blast, and waited until she saw the headlights of Patrick’s Mercedes go on. Then she put her car in gear and headed home.

A strange car waited in front of the house.

Had someone left something behind? Or maybe it was Steve, being dropped off?

As she pulled into the driveway, she saw the shield painted on the door of the parked car.

Not Steve, and not someone from the vigil.

The police.

They’ve found Lindsay.

With barely enough patience to put the car in park and turn off the lights and ignition, Kara opened the door and met the policeman on the walk. “What is it?” she demanded. “Have you found her?” By now Patrick was at her side, taking her elbow as the policeman walked them up to the door.

“Let’s go inside,” the officer said in a tone that instantly told Kara that whatever he had to say, it wasn’t going to be what she wanted to hear.

“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me what’s happened.”

Once inside, the policeman nodded them to the sofa, then pulled over a dining room chair and sat facing them. “This isn’t about your daughter, Mrs. Marshall,” he said. “This is about your husband.”

Kara’s heart skipped a beat. “Steve? What about him?” She felt Patrick’s hand on her forearm, and unconsciously covered it with her own. “What’s going on?”

“There was an accident,” the policeman said. “On the Sunken Meadow Parkway.” Kara felt a terrible chill fall over her as she realized what the officer was going to say next, and when he spoke the words, it sounded like an echo of her own thought. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Marshall. A one-car accident. Your husband was killed instantly. He didn’t suffer.”

She sat numbly for a minute—or ten?—or an hour, or only an instant?—then turned to Patrick. “I can actually feel the blood draining from my face,” she said, her voice sounding as surreal to her as the words themselves. “Did that happen to you, too?” But before Patrick could reply—even before the terrible reality of what had happened could close completely in on her—Kara sank into the blessed oblivion of unconsciousness.