Treasure Box (15 page)

"You know the place?"

"Well, you see, this is a small town, and yes, I know it well. Drive past it quite a bit. Hasn't been a soul living there for five years since the old lady went to a rest home."

An old lady who had ties to the house, gone to a rest home. That might explain why Grandmother couldn't find him herself.

"I have my boys check it out now and then," said Bolt, "to make sure there's no vandalism. You know, broken windows."

"Are there any?"

"You tell me, son. You're the one says he spent the night."

"I didn't say that."

"No, I guess I'm saying that. Saw that fax from Herndon, and I thought, let's check it out. So next time I'm driving down that way in daylight, I pull up and sure enough, there's tire tracks going in and coming out. And footprints. Don't like footprints—that's vandals. That's bums trying to squat in an abandoned house. Or tracks can be bored teenagers looking for a place to smoke some weed or pass along some sexually transmitted disease, but whatever it was I figured it was my job to know. Drove on in, parked a ways back, and saw as how you must have had a driver when you got out of your car."

"We did."

"Yeah, well, I looked for a lady's footprints, but it seems she never got out of the car."

"Is that what it looks like?"

"Or you carried her in. It's damn sure she never set foot in that snow."

"Interesting observation."

"So far so good," said Chief Bolt. "So I remember how the owner asked me to look in on the place, so I think, Time to look in. Climbed up the steps and it's kind of dirty in there, isn't it?"

"Yes sir, I'd say so."

"And cold. A man could freeze his ass off in there. But somebody walked upstairs and spent the night on a filthy dustcover and peed in a toilet that doesn't flush and spit toothpaste into the dry sink. Walked to the basement kitchen, stepping on roaches all the way, walked to the empty fridge—am I getting this right?"

Bolt's cocky sarcasm was contagious. As always, Quentin picked up the tone of the conversation and played it back. "You're quite the Sherlock Holmes," he said.

Bolt's reaction was a brief "Ha." And then: "Well, I won't go through your whole itinerary. A walk out to the bluff. You did a real dance all over the graveyard. Walked around front. And then I've got your tracks coming back out the front door. You sat down on the second from the bottom step and set your bags down beside you. And then you got up and walked on out to the road and went south. Have I about got it right?"

"Can't argue with the truth, Chief."

"And I ask myself, where was this woman who was supposedly last seen leaving the old Laurent place?"

"Laurent?"

"I guess the Laurents lived there longest so the name stuck. Anyway, the only thing I could figure was the missing woman you're looking for must have drove off in that car. Looked like the driver went around to open the door for her, but she never got out. And now she's missing."

"Definitely missing."

"So I really had only one question for you, Mr. Fears."

"Fearsss. Rhymes with pierce."

"Here's my question. Why did a man who the Herndon police tell me is richer than several third world countries combined, why would such a man go inside a freezing cold abandoned house and spend the night in bugs and filth?"

"Is that a crime, Chief?"

"Oh, if I caught you there, I could lock you up and put a vagrancy charge on you, but since you could show means of support and all, I don't think it would stick. Trespass, of course, but you didn't steal or vandalize. So no, we're not charging you with anything. I'm just curious, that's all."

"So am I. I want to know where my wife is. Doesn't sound like you know."

"I see," said Chief Bolt. "Kind of unfair for you to come up here, act weird, go away, and not answer questions about it."

This wasn't going at all well.

"Chief, let me ask you a question."

"Do you want me to answer it or just weasel around like you did?"

"Didn't you get an inquiry from a Ray Cryer about my wife, Madeleine Cryer Fears?"

"Ah, the father-in-law."

"I've never met him, but he says he is."

"Maybe it's in the paperwork somewhere, but—"

"No, it would have been called in during the last few days. You've been answering the phone, right?"

"Ray Cryer?"

"Right."

"Nothing here. I've got the old messy-desk filing system, so I can't swear to it, but no, nothing."

"Well, you see, this Ray Cryer called me and told me he had called you to tell you his daughter was missing. From that house. And that he already had the local police looking for her."

"We're the local police, and we aren't. Looking for her."

"Curiouser and curiouser."

"But if you were there when she left, Mr. Fears, why would he call to tell you she was gone?"

"That's my question, Chief. It sounded to me like maybe he was trying to set up a different version of events."

"Well, we'll never know, will we? Right now, all I've got is your word that your wife was there. And clear evidence that you've got really weird taste in lodgings."

"Well, thank you, Chief Bolt, you've been really helpful."

"So you're gonna blow me off?"

"No sir. On the contrary, I'm hoping you'll keep your eyes open and help my investigators when they get there."

"This Ray Cryer blackmailing you? Is that it?"

"Pardon?"

"Were you on drugs that night? Was it a drug deal or something, and they dropped you off and threatened you or something?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You won't tell me why you acted so weird, I got to rack my brain coming up with stories that fit the evidence."

"Chief, the house is haunted. I was invited in by ghosts, slept with ghosts, had breakfast with ghosts, went on out to the graveyard to say good-bye to their bodies, and then hiked along the highway to get home."

"You know, I may be a small-town chief of the tiniest police force this side of Maggody Arkansas, but I got as good a doorway into jail as any other cop in America. So why are you showing me such disrespect, son? Though I will say that at least you're paying for the call."

"Chief Bolt, I don't want to be your enemy."

"That's good to hear. I'm not a good enemy to have."

"Can you tell me anything about old lady Laurent?"

"Laurent? She's dead."

Dead? Then what was "Find me" all about? "I'm sorry to hear that."

"Happened about twenty years ago and she was older than God when she croaked, so nobody's broke up about it."

"I thought you said the old lady went into a rest home a few years ago."

"Son, it's plain to me you don't know squat about that house and the people who used to live in it, and yet you said your wife took you there to meet her family. Now you lay it out plain. Is this Ray Cryer blackmailing you about something? Did you do something criminal in that house? Or are you just insane? Because you sure as hell did
not
marry a woman who has anything to do with that house, since that family is
gone
. Old lady Laurent is dead. The current owner is her daughter, the old lady I mentioned who went into a rest home. And
her
only daughter is about thirty-five and married with a little kid, and she's never been back since the old lady moved out."

"I did nothing criminal in that house. If Ray Cryer is blackmailing me, he hasn't asked for money yet and if he does I won't give him any because I haven't done anything I need to hide. As to whether I'm insane, well, at my income level people generally call us eccentric."

"But you're still not answering my questions."

"Chief, I want very much to meet you."

"The feeling is mutual."

"I want to go through that house with you and find out everything you can tell me about it."

"What, am I a realtor now?"

"Believe me or not, Chief, my wife came to that house with me. She grew up in that house, of that I have no doubt. It's her people buried in the graveyard. And if I have any hope of finding her, it'll be through whatever I can learn about that house. So I will be there soon. And in the meantime, I'll fax you the receipt from the limo service that took us there, so you can find out whether I did in fact arrive with my wife."

"I'll be waiting for it, son."

They said their chilly good-byes. Quentin hung up the phone and called the limo company to have them fax Chief Bolt a copy of the bill. All the while, he kept telling himself that this was about the stupidest thing he could do. Since Ray Cryer was lying and he hadn't told the police anything, why should Quentin do anything to arouse more suspicion? Why didn't he just tell Bolt some cockamamy story and hang up and sigh in relief and call off the search for a missing wife that he knew would never turn up? And above all, why would he provoke Bolt into getting proof positive from the limo driver that yes indeed, Mrs. Fears got out of the car and went into the house with Mr. Fears? The fact that there were no woman's footprints coming
out
of the house could only make the chief suspect foul play.

And yet at the time it seemed like the right thing to do. A gut feeling. A sense that Chief Bolt was a decent guy whose trust was worth having. And there was something important about him.

Oh. Of course. Chief Bolt knew the old lady. And if there was any sense to the universe at all, the old lady in the rest home had to be Grandmother. Didn't she? Only she wasn't old lady Laurent, who was twenty years dead, which would make her Grandmother's late mother, which meant Laurent must have been Grandmother's maiden name and the chief would know her married name and where to find her. So knowing the chief was maybe a route to Grandmother.

It was also quite possibly a route to jail.

Quentin shuddered, and then thought of the thing that had made him shudder: When he felt so certain that he should say what he said to the chief, what made him think it was his own idea? For all he knew, he was acting out somebody's script.

No. The User doesn't do that. She's made me see things, but she hasn't made me
do
things. She can't make me say or do things because if she could, that box would be open and this whole thing would have ended back there by the Hudson. And if Grandmother could make me do things she wouldn't have made me see a talking rat in order to persuade me.

Quentin thought about it some more and realized why he didn't palm off some easy lie on the chief. It was because Quentin was a pretty good judge of people, Madeleine, of course, being a spectacular exception. After screening hundreds and hundreds of people responding to his ads, after working with many dozens of partners over the years, he could tell pretty quickly which people he'd enjoy working with and which would be nothing but pain.

And Chief Bolt was his kind of guy. It was that simple. If Bolt were asking him for funding to start some business, Quentin would hear him out, make sure the premise was sound, and have the papers drawn up, because he could do business with Bolt.

Except the business Bolt was in was the suspicious cop trade, and the only partnership the chief had in mind was the uneasy partnership of cop and suspect. The only thing the chief lacked was evidence of a crime and Quentin was helping him find some.

Maybe it's an unconscious attempt to thwart the User, thought Quentin. After all, I can't open that treasure box if I'm in jail.

Something touched him in the night. As he lay on his side in bed, something light glided over his bare skin, above his hip. He woke with a start, slapping at it. Someone gave a cry. He lunged for the light and turned it on.

Madeleine sat in the bed, holding her hand as if it had been burnt, an accusing look on her face.

He couldn't think of anything to say.

"Miss me?" she said.

Suddenly it annoyed him, the way she was holding her hand, as if she were really in pain. "Don't bother holding your hand. I know you aren't hurt."

"You think it doesn't hurt when you slap me?"

"I thought a spider was crawling up my—yeah, well, I wasn't far wrong, was I?"

"Don't be mad," she said. "Please don't be mad."

The expression on her face was so genuinely sad, so full of longing, that he felt himself melting with compassion in spite of himself. But no,
no
, he refused to be taken in.

"Get out," he said.

She was wearing a nightgown. She plucked at the hem. "Tin, please, I..."

"Don't call me that. You sucked that out of my mind. Or Lizzy's—that name doesn't belong to you!"

"No, it's
your
name."

"It's my name when it's spoken by somebody who loves me. Not somebody who's trying to use me to open some...
box
." He got up and walked clumsily around the bed, out of the bedroom, into the kitchen. He got orange juice out of the fridge and poured a glass.

She stood in the kitchen doorway. "Enough for me?"

"No," he said. "You don't need it. And that's something I want to know. Since you're not really here, what did you
do
with everything you ate and drank? Where does it go?"

Her face went cold and she walked back to the living room. "I see," she said. "Your note meant nothing."

He followed her, the glass of juice in his hand. "So your real name is Duncan?"

She whirled on him. "My real name is Madeleine Cryer Fears. Your wife. There's a license."

"And how did you sign it? How did your name get on it? You can't
really
hold a pen."

"I can hold a pen. I can hold a glass. I can hold
you
. Remember how it felt?" She reached for him. Her hand, reaching to brush against his cheek, to cup his jaw and draw him close...

He grabbed her wrist and pulled her even closer, then poured orange juice over her head. It dribbled down her hair, over her forehead. She covered her face with her hands and wept. "All I want is to love you, Quentin!"

He stood there, looking at the juice, how real it looked. How it dripped from her hair onto her shoulders, some of it down onto the carpet.

"No," he said. "You're not there, and when I poured out that juice it went straight down to the carpet. It didn't go into your hair because you... aren't... real."

She took the glass and threw it against the wall. It shattered and fell. "Think the neighbors heard
that?
" she asked.

The shards of glass sparkled in the light from the kitchen.

She was crying. He was crying. "Madeleine," he said. "I'm so sorry, I'm—you wouldn't believe—these past few days without you—"

She held him. Her body fit perfectly against his, as it always had. "You think it was easy for me? I shouldn't have run out of there, but Grandmother—she hates me so much. I should have remembered, my love for you, it's stronger than anything, stronger than her hate, stronger than... Oh, Quentin, don't ever be angry with me again, please, it scares me, it hurts me..."

And as she spoke, he looked at the glittering bits of broken glass and remembered the shimmer of the perfect goblets on the table in the library. And then how bare and dirty the table looked, under its dustcover. The look of the water flowing out of the tap into the clean sink in the bathroom, and then the dirty dry sink with taps that didn't work.

"Tin, please let me call you that, please, let me come back and be your wife the way I should be. The way we promised before God that we would."

"You didn't want any cameras at our wedding, Mad," he said. "Why was that?"

She was toying with his hair. "I wanted to imagine that I was the perfect bride, beautiful as snow in sunlight." Her words were simple, and her voice was like low music. Her hand touched his skin, the same touch that had wakened him a few minutes ago and it was awakening him again. "I didn't want to see pictures that might contradict my dream. Do you believe all those Kodak ads? That nothing is real unless you have a picture of it to prove it to yourself? Maybe I should be giving you a Hallmark card right now, or calling you on AT&T so we can have a really touching moment."

He laughed. It
was
Madeleine, it was the woman he loved. The sound of her voice, the feel of her hair under his fingers.

Her hair.

And now suddenly her hair was sticky with orange juice. But a moment ago it hadn't been. His hand froze in place.

She looked into his eyes. "What?" she said. "What?"

He turned his face away. He thought of Lizzy. He thought of the false image of her, walking up to the townhouse that was rented to nobody.

He pushed her away and walked to the wall where the glass had fallen. He bent down and picked up a shard of glass and drew it along the wall. A scratch appeared in the wallpaper. Suddenly, without planning it, without knowing he was going to do it until he did, he jabbed the glass into the skin of his abdomen. Jabbed twice, three times. Only then did the pain come. He doubled over, it was so bad. Fell to one knee. But he knew it was a lie. He looked down at his belly. Blood was coming out, but there wasn't enough of it.

And then, suddenly, there was more. Too much. He hadn't hit an artery. There wasn't anything there that could bleed so much. In fact, he knew that there was no wound there to bleed. Nothing. No reason for pain. There wasn't even a piece of glass in his hand.

He still held the shard in his fingers.

Hadn't Lizzy told him he was stronger than most people? Why couldn't he fight off these illusions of hers?

On one knee, he sliced through the skin of the other. Sliced deeper and deeper. The glass cut deep. But all he could think of, all he
let
himself think of, was dissecting a frog in science class. The musculature of the leg when he peeled back the formaldehyde-soaked skin. And for the moment he thought of that, his leg was also a frog's leg. He peeled the skin off just as he had the frog's leg.

"No!" cried Madeleine.

There was no wound in his leg at all. No shard of glass in his hand. No stab wound in his belly. The orange juice glass lay on the floor where he must have dropped it when Madeleine made him think she had taken it out of his hand.

On all fours, he moved to the spot where she had been standing when he poured the orange juice over her head. There it was, a single puddle, spattered, but only one stream of juice had fallen, uninterrupted by a human body. He had recovered reality.

Which meant that he had lost her again.

"Madeleine," he whispered.

From the couch, her voice sounded cold and angry. "I'm still here."

He recoiled, fell back onto the carpet, looked at her. She was on the couch primping her hair, looking into a small vanity mirror. "So your dead sister told you that you were strong," said Madeleine. "Bully for you."

"Who are you really?" he said. "Just be honest with me, can't you? Who are you and why did you pick me?"

"I'm Madeleine Cryer Fears," she said. "I'm your wife."

"You don't exist and you never did."

"Oh? Then who
have
you been making love to in beds all over America?"

"A lie," he said. "I've been loving a lie."

"Wrong answer, Quentin," she said. "I am the truth. I am the deepest truth in the most secret places in your heart. I am all your dreams come true."

"What do you want from me?"

"What every wife wants. Someone to love. Someone who'll love me. Trust. Faith. A future. Your babies."

"Shut
up!
"

"Do I take it this means you've changed your mind about children? Men are like that, so changeable. But I can wait. I won't trick you—no babies till you're ready to be a daddy."

"You never let up, do you?"

She leaned forward until she was spread like a lizard on the couch, leaning over the arm so they were nearly face to face. "Let me tell you a secret, my darling," she whispered. "I'm as real as
any
wife. What do you think marriage is? It's all pretense. Your mother pretending that your father's temper doesn't scare her. Your father pretending that he doesn't hate it when she gets him all riled up about something and then suddenly can't understand why he's upset. Pretending to be happy with each other when they're both so desperately lonely because along about week three of their marriage they realized that they didn't really know each other and they never would, they'd be strangers together for the rest of their lives. But they couldn't live with that, nobody can, I've seen thousands of marriages and they can't face it that they're paired up with a stranger and so the decent ones, the ones who want to be good, they pretend to be whatever they think their partner wants them to be, and then they pretend that they believe in their partner's pretense. The only difference between them and me is that I'm so good at it. When I pretend to be exactly the wife you really want, I
am
that wife. I
am
. It is my whole existence. And when I pretend to love you exactly as you are, I
do
. I'm totally focused on you, I'm witty when you want witty, sexy when you want sexy, weepy when you want sentimental, beautiful when you want to show me off. I am your true wife."

"You don't know anything," said Quentin.

"I know
you
."

"You know how to get power over me. And it worked, yeah, you had me dancing. Eating out of your hand. Give the boy exactly what he dreams of and he'll sit up and beg."

"I'm the one who's begging now," she said.

"You're the one who doesn't leave footprints in the snow," he said. "You're the one that orange juice pours right through."

"You think you don't believe in me."

"I don't."

"Then why am I still here?"

"You're not," he said.

He got to his feet. At first, for just a moment, he limped on the leg he had carved with the shard of glass. Except he hadn't cut it, there was no injury; he forced himself to walk without a limp.

"Even when you aren't looking at me, I'm here," she said.

She followed him as he walked through the doorway to his bedroom. He slammed it and it passed right through her. She stood there on the inside of the slammed door.

"I don't like it when you do that," she said.

"Slam doors?"

"I think that on the whole I've been pretty decent about this."

"You!" He climbed back under his sheets. "You're an indecency."

"I didn't have to come to you with love, you know."

He looked away from her, leaned over and switched off the light. Now only the faint light slanting in through the mostly-closed blinds illuminated the room.

"I can find other things in your mind," she said.

Suddenly he threw the bedclothes off him. A half-dozen huge shiny spiders were skittering rapidly along the sheet, over his legs. He flung himself off the bed onto the floor.

"I know those spiders aren't real," he said, panting.

A man's voice answered him, a bleak-sounding whisper. "What is reality?" And then a vast hand clamped him around the throat and picked him up and flung him back onto the bed. As he sprawled on his back, the huge, white, slimy figure with a pus-filled wound for a face raised its other hand and smashed it down into his groin. Quentin screamed in agony until the monster squeezed his throat shut.

This isn't happening, he told himself. The trouble was believing it.

If I believe it, he thought, she can kill me with my own fear. I have to stop fighting it because it isn't there. Like the broken glass wasn't there. Like the wounds in my leg. My throat is shut by my own panic, not by any hand because there
is
no hand.

Breathe slowly, let the air out a little, then bring in a little. There's nothing in the room with me. I'm alone here on my bed.

He opened his eyes. The monster was gone.

But Madeleine was lying on him, her head on his chest, her waist between his legs, her hair spilling onto the bedsheet. Her body felt warm. He could feel her heartbeat. And despite himself, he was filled with longing. He raised his hand to caress her. But he stopped himself. It would not happen. He brought his hands up and tucked them behind his head, fingers interlocking. Just like the monster, this image, too, would go away.

"Aren't you the strong one," she whispered. "Aren't you brave, to insist on reality. You never
could
face your own dreams."

She rose from his belly. But not as a normal woman might, raising herself up on her arms. Rather she rose like a marionette, pulled by strings. And yes, she
was
a marionette, with Madeleine's face, her naked body, but the joints were mechanical and her jaw moved on a string.

"Please. Someday, if I'm really good, can't I be a real girl?"

And then she was gone.

He lay there, panting, exhausted physically and emotionally.

"Oh, Lizzy, I did it," he whispered.

He rolled to one side, then onto his stomach, one leg drawn up, his fist doubled under his chin, the way he always slept, the way he had slept as a boy. But his eyes stayed wide open. Seeing nothing. Seeing everything.