The Best American Mystery Stories 2012 (7 page)

Olivia Korhonen was clearly on her guard in an instant, though her tone remained light. She set the tray of sandwiches down and said slowly, “Ah? Ulterior motives? Then you had probably better reveal them now, don't you think so?” She stood with her head tipped slightly sideways, like an inquisitive bird.

Mattie's heart was beating annoyingly fast, and she was very thirsty. She said, “You are stalking me, Olivia. I don't know why. You are following me everywhere . . . and that
thing
you say every single time we meet.” Olivia Korhonen did not reply, nor change her expression. Mattie said, “Nobody else hears you, but I do. You whisper it—
I will kill you.
I hear you.”

Sleepless, playing variations on the scene over and over in her head the night before, she had expected anything from outrage and accusation to utter bewilderment to tearful, fervent denial. What happened instead was nothing she could have conceived of: Olivia Korhonen clapped her hands and began to laugh.

Her laughter was like cold silver bells, chiming a fraction out of tune, their dainty discordance more jarring than any rusty clanking could have been. Olivia Korhonen said, “Oh, I did wonder if you would ever let yourself understand me. You are such a . . . such a
timorous
woman, you know, Mattie Whalen—frightened of so very much, it is a wonder that you can ever peep out of your house, your little hole in the baseboard. Eyes flicking everywhere, whiskers twitching so frantically . . .” She broke off into a bubbling fit of giggles, while Mattie stared and stared, remembering girls in school hallways who had snickered just so.

“Oh, yes,” Olivia Korhonen said. “Yes, Mattie, I will kill you—be very sure of that. But not yet.” She clasped her hands together at her breast and bowed her head slightly, smiling. “Not just yet.”

“
Why?
Why do you want . . . what have I ever,
ever
done to you?”

The smile warmed and widened, but Olivia Korhonen was some time answering. When she did, the words came slowly, thoughtfully. “Mattie, where I come from we have a great many sheep, they are one of Finland's major products. And where you have sheep, of course, you must have dogs. Oh, we do have many wonderful dogs—you should see them handle and guide and work the sheep. You would be so fascinated, I know you would.”

Her cheeks had actually turned a bit pink with what seemed like earnest enthusiasm. She said, “But Mattie, dear, it is a curious thing about sheep and dogs. Sometimes stray dogs break into a sheepfold, and then they begin to kill.” She did not emphasize the word, but it struck Mattie like a physical blow under the heart. Olivia Korhonen went on. “They are not killing to eat, out of hunger—no, they are simply killing blindly, madly, they will wipe out a whole flock of sheep in a night, and then run on home to their masters and their dog biscuits. Do you understand me so far, Mattie?”

Mattie's body was so rigid that she could not even nod her head. Olivia's softly chiming voice continued. “It is as though these good family dogs have gone temporarily insane. Animal doctors, veterinarians, they think now that the pure
passivity,
the purebred
stupidity
of the sheep somehow triggers—is that the right word, Mattie? I mean it like
to set off
—somehow triggers something in the dog's brain, something very old. The sheep are blundering around in the pen, bleating in panic, too stupid to protect themselves, and it is all just too much for the dogs—even for sheepdogs sometimes. They simply go mad.” She spread her hands now, leaning forward, graceful as ever. “Do you see now, Mattie? I do hope you begin to see.”

“No.” The one word was all Mattie could force out between freezing lips. “No.”

“You are my sheep,” Olivia Korhonen said. “And I am like the dogs. You are a born victim, like all sheep, and it is your mere presence that makes you irresistible to me. Of course, dogs are dogs—they cannot ever wait to kill. But I can. I like to wait.”

Mattie could not move. Olivia Korhonen stepped back, looked at her wristwatch, and made a light gesture toward the door, as though freeing Mattie from a spell. “Now you had better run along home, dear, for I have company coming. We will practice our strategy for the Bridge Group another time.”

Mattie sat in her car for a long time, hands trembling, before she felt able even to turn the key in the ignition. She had no memory of driving home, except a vague awareness of impatient honking behind her when she lingered at intersections after the traffic light had changed. When she arrived home she sat by the telephone with her fingers on the keypad, trying to make herself dial Pat Gallagher's number. After a time, she began to cry.

She did call that evening, by which time a curious calm, unlike any other she had ever felt, had settled over her. This may have been because by then she was extremely drunk, having entered the stage of slow but very precise speech, and a certain deliberate, unhurried rationality that she never seemed able to attain sober. Both Pat and Babs immediately offered to come and stay with her, but Mattie declined with thanks. “Not much point to it. She said she'd wait . . . said she
liked
waiting.” Her voice sounded strange in her own ears, and oddly new. “You can't bodyguard me forever. I guess
I
have to bodyguard me. I guess I just have to.”

When she hung up—only after her friends had renewed their insistence that she call daily, on pain of home invasion—she did not drink any more, but sat motionless by the phone, waiting for Don's return. It was his weekly staff-meeting night, and she knew he would be late, but she felt like sitting just where she was.
If I never moved again, she'd have to come over here to kill me. And the neighbors would see.
The phone rang once, but she did not answer.

Don came home in, for him, a cheerful mood, having been informed that his supervisor at the agency, whom he loathed, was being transferred to another branch. He had every expectation of a swift promotion. Mattie—or someone in Mattie's body, shaping words with her still-cold lips—congratulated him, and even opened a celebratory bottle of champagne, though she drank none of her glass. Don began calling his friends to spread the news, and Mattie went into the kitchen to start a pot roast. The steamed fish with greens and polenta revolution had passed Don quietly by.

The act of cooking soothed her nerves, as it had always done; but the coldness of her skin seemed to have spread to her mind—which was not, when considered, a bad thing at all. There was a peculiar clarity to her thoughts now: both her options and her fears seemed so sharply defined that she felt as though she were traveling on an airplane that had just broken out of clouds into sunlight.
I live in clouds. I always have.

Fork in one of his hands, cordless in the other, Don devoured two helpings of the roast and praised it in between calls. Mattie, nibbling for appearances' sake, made no attempt to interrupt; but when he finally put the phone down for a moment she remarked, “That woman at the Bridge Group? The one who said she was going to kill me?”

Don looked up, the wariness in his eyes unmistakable. “Yeah?”

“She means it. She really means to kill me.” Mattie had been saying the words over and over to herself all afternoon; by now they came out briskly, almost casually. She said, “We discussed it for some time.”

Don uttered a cholesterol-saturated sigh. “Damn, ever since you started with that bridge club, feels like I'm running a daycare center. Look, this is middle-school bullshit, you know it and she knows it. Just tell her, enough with the bullshit, it's getting real old. Or find yourself another partner, probably the best thing.” He had the cordless phone in his hand again.

The strange, distant Mattie said softly, “I'm just telling you.”

“And I'm telling you, get another partner. Silly shit, she's not about to kill anybody.” He wandered off into the living room, dialing.

Mattie stood in the kitchen doorway, looking after him. She said—clearly enough for him to have heard, if he hadn't already been talking on the phone—“No, she's not.” She liked the sound of it, and said it again. “She's not.” Then she went straight off to bed, read a bit of
Chicken Soup for the Soul,
and fell quickly asleep. She dreamed that Olivia Korhonen was leaning over her in bed, smiling widely and eagerly. There were little teeth on her tongue and small, triangular teeth fringing her lips.

Mattie got to the Bridge Group early the next afternoon and waited, with impatience that surprised her, for Olivia Korhonen to arrive. The Group met in a community building within sight of the Moss Harbor wharf, its windows fronting directly on the parking lot. Mattie was already holding the door open when Olivia Korhonen crossed the lot.

Did she look even a little startled—the least bit taken aback by her prey's eager welcome? Mattie hoped so. She said brightly, “I was afraid you might not be coming today.”

“And I thought that perhaps
you . . .
” Olivia Korhonen very deliberately let the sentence trail away. If she had been at all puzzled, she gathered herself as smoothly as a cat landing on its feet. “I am glad to see you, Mattie. I had some foolish idea that you might be, perhaps, ill?”

“Not a bit—not when we need to work on our strategy.” Mattie touched her elbow, easing her toward the table where Jeannie Atkinson and old Joe Booker were both beckoning. “You know we need to do that.” It was a physical effort to make herself smile into Olivia Korhonen's blue eyes, but she managed.

Playing worse than even she ever had, with foolish bids, rash declarations of trumps, scoring errors, and complete mismanagement of her partner's hand when Olivia Korhonen was dummy, she worked with desperate concentration—manifesting as lightheaded carelessness—on upsetting the woman's balance, her judgment of the situation. How well she succeeded, and to what end, she could not have said; but when Olivia Korhonen mouthed
I will kill you
once again at her as she was dealing a final rubber, she fought down the ice-pick stab of terror and gaily said, “
Ah-ah,
we mustn't signal each other—against the rules, bad, bad.” Jeannie and Joe raised their eyebrows, and Olivia Korhonen, very briefly,
almost
looked embarrassed.

She left hurriedly, directly after the game. Mattie followed her out, blithely apologizing left and right, as always, for her poor play. At the car, Olivia Korhonen turned to say, evenly and without expression, “You are not spoiling the game for me. This is childish, all this that you are playing at. It means nothing.”

Mattie felt her mouth drying and her heart beginning to pound. But she said, keeping her voice as calm as she could, “Not everybody gets to know how and when they're going to die. If you're really going to kill me, you don't get to tell me how to behave.” Olivia Korhonen did not reply, but got into her car and drove away, and Mattie walked back to the Bridge Group for tea and cookies.

“One for the sheep,” Pat said on the phone that night. “You crossed her up—she figured you'd be running around in the pen, all crazy with fear, bleating and blatting and wetting yourself. The fun part. And instead you came right to her and practically spit in her eye. I'll bet she's thinking about that one right now.”

On the extension, Babs said flatly, “Yes, she sure as hell is. And
I'm
thinking that she won't make that mistake again. She's regrouping, is what it is—she'll be coming from another place next time, another angle. Don't take her lightly, the way she took you. Nothing's changed.”

“I know that.” Mattie's voice, like her hands, was unsteady. “I wish I could say
I've
changed, but I haven't, not at all. I'm the same fraidy cat I always was, but maybe I'm covering it a little better, I don't know. All I know is I just want to hide under the bed and cover up my head.”

Pat said slowly, “I was raised in the country. A sheep-killing dog doesn't go for it just once. This woman has killed before.”

Babs said, “Get in close. You snuggle up to her, you tail her around like she's been tailing you. That's not part of the game, she won't like that at all. You keep
coming
at her.”

Pat said, “And you keep calling us. Every day.”

It took practice. All her instincts told her to turn and run the moment she recognized the elegant figure on the street corner ahead of her or heard the too-friendly voice at her elbow. But gradually she learned not only to force herself to respond with equal affability, but to become the one accosting, waving, calling out—even issuing impromptu invitations to join her for tea or coffee. These were never accepted, and the act of proposing them always left her feeling dizzy and sick; but she continued doggedly to “snuggle up” to Olivia Korhonen at every opportunity. Frightened and alone, still she kept coming.

She had the first inkling that the change in her behavior might be having some effect when Eileen mentioned that Olivia Korhonen had diffidently sounded her out about being partnered with a more skilled player for the Group's upcoming tournament. Eileen had explained that the teams had already been registered, and that in any case none of them would have taken kindly to being broken up and reassigned. Olivia Korhonen hadn't raised the subject again, but Eileen had thought Mattie would want to know. Eileen always told people the things she thought they would want to know.

For her part, Mattie continued to make a point of chattering buoyantly at the bridge table as she misplayed one hand after another, then apologizing endlessly as she trampled through another rubber, leaving ruin in her wake. She announced, laughing, after one particularly disastrous no-trump contract, “I wouldn't blame Olivia if she wanted to strangle me right now. I'd have it coming!” Their opponents looked embarrassed, and Olivia Korhonen smiled and smoothed her hair.