Body and Bone (21 page)

The grateful expressions on their faces broke Nessa's heart. They hugged her again.

“I'm so sorry,” Nessa said, and cried. “I tried to keep him clean, I just—­”

“It's not your fault,” Linda said, smoothing Nessa's hair.

“Do you want to come in?” Nessa said.

“No,” Tony said. “We want to get home before dark. Would you call us when you find out . . . anything?”

“Yes,” Nessa said, then got Daltrey out of the car. He opened his sleepy eyes and grinned at her.

“Hi, baby, how are you?” she asked.

He signed “Fine,” and Linda sighed.

“I tried,” she said.

“It's okay, Grandma,” Nessa said. “Thank you for everything.”

Tony wrestled the car seat out of the car and deposited Daltrey's little suitcase on the ground. They got back in the car and drove away.

“I missed you so much,” Nessa said. “Did you miss me?”

He nodded energetically.

“Are you hungry?” she said.

He shook his head and squirmed to get out of her arms. She put him down and he ran to all the outbuildings, touching each one. He stopped at the hops vines and pointed before coming back to her.

They went inside and Isabeau drove up half an hour later. The joyous reunion between Daltrey and Isabeau did Nessa's heart good. Then Isabeau threw her arms around Nessa. She talked about her camping trip to Waconda Springs and said they should take Daltrey there before the end of the summer, because he would love it.

The three of them watched a Disney movie until Daltrey's bedtime, and then Nessa tucked him in. “See you tomorrow, sweetie,” she said.

He signed “Good night.”

Downstairs in the living room, Nessa beckoned to Isabeau to join her out back.

“I don't want to talk about this inside in case there's another bug in there,” Nessa said. They sat on the deck chairs.

“So what did you find out?” Isabeau said.

“First tell me what happened with your dad's best friend.”

“Well,” Isabeau said, “they ain't best friends no more. Dad punched him in the nose.”

Nessa actually laughed.

“Yeah. My folks are pissed. They're trying to talk me into pressing charges against him, but I don't know.”

“You should consider it,” Nessa said.

“Okay. I will. So what did you find out?”

They discussed the body in the lake and what it could mean. Nessa told her about her exchange with the locksmith, saying it wasn't John who bought the keys, and about the bug—­that Mac was taking it apart to see if he could figure out who it belonged to.

“Wow,” Isabeau said. “That is so messed up.”

“I know.”

Nessa looked at the clock on her phone, dropped it into her purse, and stood. “I've got to go,” she said. “But I'm really glad you're home. And that you're not quitting.”

Isabeau smiled.

N
ESSA DROVE UP
to the dark station parking lot and killed the engine. Otto's Vespa was parked there.

It was a starry night, and Nessa threw her head back to take in the constellations, Cee Lo Green's voice growling in her head, and she smiled. The wind blew hot and steady across the field.

She used her key to get into the station, which was dark—­just how Otto liked it. Her phone pinged as she relocked the front door from inside. She pulled her phone from her purse and looked at it.

Got the phone number from the SIM card
, the text said, and for a minute she didn't know what that meant until she saw it was from Mac. Another text followed it, displaying a phone number. She didn't recognize it, but she didn't recognize a lot of phone numbers. On a whim, she decided to call it. If it was John's final phone number, maybe she would hear his voice on the voicemail.

The satellite feed was playing the indie-­alternative station. Nessa opened the on-­air studio door, and there sat Otto in front of the glowing board and computer monitors.

She tapped the number and pressed her phone to her ear.

Over Robbie Robertson's “Somewhere Down the Crazy River,” she heard—­was it an accordion? What the hell? An accordion playing “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” She started to laugh, as Otto turned toward her and pulled his own phone out of his pocket.

“Hello?”

The voice echoed on both her phone and Otto's.

They stared at each other.

“Why are you calling . . .” Otto said into his phone, then pulled it from his ear and looked at it, his smile vanishing. “Oh, shit.”

She walked, fists clenched, toward him.

“You fucking hipster douchebag,” she said. “You. You're the troll.”

How could she not have figured it out? How had he slipped right by her? Because she'd never credited him with enough brains to do something like this. Fucking bastard, threatening her child and . . .

Chills covered her body.

Killing her husband.

“Listen,” Otto said, holding his hands up. “I couldn't pay my electricity bill. My rent's past due. I needed the money. They told me you lied to get the job. They said they needed to bug your house to get the evidence—­”

Nessa grabbed the lapels of his jacket.

“Who told you that?”

“—­and all I had to do was plant the bug in your living room and transcribe what I heard on the—­”

“
Who told you that
?”

“The FCC.”

“The FCC?” Nessa spat. “How stupid are you? Do you really think the government asks private citizens to put bugs in other ­people's houses?”

His eyes seemed to clear. She could almost see dawn breaking on his face.

Nessa pressed down on Otto's shoulders until the office chair back was at a forty-­five-­degree angle. “My husband is dead. I'm going to be arrested. A rapist came to my house, and you—­”

“Whoa, whoa,” Otto said, frantic, shoving her backward until he was upright again. “I seriously do not know what you are talking about. All I did was put that bug under your coffee table! That's all I did! I don't know anything about that other shit. They said—­”

“They? Who? Who are
they
?” she screamed. Then she launched herself at Otto and tightened her hands around his throat, holding nothing back.

“Hello, Candy.”

A painful jolt of adrenaline accompanied the voice that came over the in-­studio speakers, and she let go of Otto immediately and stumbled backward.

Candy?

“Them,” Otto said, his voice chafed and raw, pointing at the speaker.

Nessa looked up as if
they
would be perched atop it.

“Thanks, Otto. You've fulfilled your obligation.” The voice cut out the satellite feed, a low-­pitched, electronic voice, like Stephen Hawking, only without the British accent. It was the same voice that had called the station to let her know it could see her inside the studio a few weeks ago. That voice filled not only the studio, but her whole consciousness.

“Okay,” Otto said toward the ceiling, “but can I just be the one to—­”

“You're not going to do your show, Candy. Otto's going to take over for you tonight, because you need to get home.”

Without the voice even saying it, Nessa knew. They were in her house, where her little boy was sleeping.

Right now.

Her phone pinged, and she looked at it. A photo appeared of Daltrey in a blindfold, his little hands tied behind his back.

And a gun pointed at his head.

Nessa gasped so hard she felt something tear in her throat. Then a mewling sound dribbled out of her mouth as queasiness nearly overcame her, her stomach convulsing in terror. Her son. They were going to take him away from her, one way or the other. If they killed him, she would die too.

The phone dropped from her hands and landed faceup on the ground. The photo disappeared. That damned self-­deleting photo app again.

Nessa hissed to Otto, “You have no idea what you've done.”

Otto panted, clearly horrified.

“Candy!” the voice said sharply. “Do not say another word to Otto. Leave immediately and go home. I'm going to call your phone, and you'll stay on the line. Do you understand?”

“Jeep's Blues” played, and Nessa picked the phone up off the ground and answered it.

“Now go out to your car and drive home,” the troll said over the phone. “If you're not there within fifteen minutes, the boy dies. And be careful driving. If you're pulled over by the police, he dies.”

Brilliant. The troll would keep her on the phone so she couldn't call the police.

Where was Isabeau? Was she part of this? Had she so thoroughly fooled Nessa?

As if the troll could read her mind, her phone pinged and she looked at it. Another photo appeared on her phone.

Isabeau. On the ground. Her head surrounded by a pool of blood.

Oh, God. Oh, help me, God.

Nessa's legs were suddenly dream legs: heavy, rubbery, useless. Moving in slow motion, threatening to give out completely. And everything around her became crystalline, magnified and in sharp focus, so much so that her eyes hurt. Outside, the bug-­covered outdoor light was blinding in its brilliance, the insects themselves as if she were seeing them under a microscope, the planets and stars above her. It was as if she'd never truly seen until now.

Her legs became solid again and she ran to the Pacifica and got in. Her hands shook so much she dropped her keys on the floor mat, then smacked her forehead on the steering wheel.

“Shit!” she yelled.

“What are you doing?” the troll said, suspicious.

“I hit my head,” Nessa said through gritted teeth.

“You didn't really think you'd never be found out, did you?” The voice was tinny but familiar somehow.

“No,” Nessa said, “I didn't.” And she meant it, because the day had come. It was today.

She put the car in gear and drove toward home.

“I'm going to put you on speaker so that I can drive carefully.”

“Great idea,” the troll said. “There's a GPS tracker on your vehicle, and we can see exactly where you're going. And if you don't go straight home, the boy dies.”

Nessa brought up the keypad on her phone and texted 911. The return message was
Error Invalid Number
.

Damn Manhattan. They'd get this ser­vice in the next fifteen years or so. Too late for her. Too late for Daltrey.

Maybe she was having an acid flashback. Maybe she was hallucinating. Maybe whoever had been tormenting her and trying to drive her insane for the last month had finally gotten the job done, because this was not happening.

“What do you want?” Nessa said. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because you killed my daughter.”

“I—­what?” Nessa said. Her brain felt like it was going to snap in half. So this was . . . Candy's birth mom? The one who abandoned her, left her to live with her grandmother?
Now
she gave a shit? What the actual fuck?

“And you're going to die tonight just like she did. If you do what I tell you, I'll let your son live. If you don't, he dies. ”

“Are you—­are you Candy's mother?” Nessa asked.

“No, of course not,” the voice said. “I'm Rosie's.”

 

Chapter Twenty-­Three

N
ESSA DROVE OFF
the road, onto the gravel and weed-­strewn shoulder, unable to hold on to the wheel, her head roiling. The Pacifica rocketed toward a guardrail but Nessa was paralyzed with terror, couldn't take her foot off the accelerator. Finally her left foot found the brake and stomped it to the floor, sending Nessa's head into the steering wheel again. She jammed the gearshift into Park.

Her
mother? Her own
mother
?

In Nessa's inflamed brain, a B-­roll of snippets from Joyce's appearances and roles on TV and film played on a screen, bearing down on her like a bullet train until Nessa had to throw the door open and scream into the indifferent night.
“No!”

She screamed until she ran out of breath.

So this was all meant for Candy?

When Nessa finally inhaled, she heard Joyce's unmasked voice coming from the speaker phone. “Candy!”

“Mom,” Nessa said, gasping. “Mom.” Nessa's own voice sounded like her five-­year-­old self, small, terrified, alone.

“What did you say?” Joyce said.

“Mom,” Nessa gulped. “It's me. It's Rosie.”

There was a pause on the line.

“Rosie is dead,” her mother said. “But I know who you are. You're the white-­trash girl who got my daughter hooked on drugs and—­”

“Mom, I swear. It's me. It's Rosie!”

“Oh, stop it,” Joyce said. “I had to identify Rosie's body. Do you think a mother doesn't know her own child? You're Vanessa Frye, the girl who ruined my family forever, took my child from me.”

“Mom—­”

“Stop calling me that!” Joyce shouted, throwing out a shrill of feedback because the phone couldn't handle the volume.

Joyce wept, beautiful, melodic, practiced sobs. This was the role of a lifetime for her, and she was giving it her all.

“You left Rosie there alone to die. What did you care? I tried to get the police to go after you, to find you and punish you, but they don't care about finding a junkie. In LA, they only care about junkies if they're actors' children.”

She said those words bitterly, biting them off one by one. Then she broke down crying again.

And Nessa wept with her, remembering that day, remembering her attempts to keep Candy conscious, the foam and blood dripping from her nose and mouth, the half-­shut eyes, her soul and spirit so far receded into her body that it would never return. That face had haunted Nessa's dreams ever since and would until the end of her days. And she deserved that. It should have been her who died that day. She should have taken the first shot.

Her mother said the words that described exactly what Nessa was feeling: “You're so selfish you didn't think twice about the trail of devastation you left behind, did you? You just went on and lived your life, your perfect, charmed life.”

Nessa was now crying so hard she could barely see.

“I see that you've stopped. You have three minutes to get home.”

Nessa pulled the gearshift into Drive and pulled onto the road again. She tried not to speed, tried to clear her eyes. Lucky she'd driven these roads so many times. She turned off the highway onto the county road that led home.

“There's no point turning you into the police because the statute of limitations has run out for several of your crimes. For murdering Rosie, you'd only be charged with second degree murder or manslaughter.”

But it had been an accident. A tragic, stupid accident.

“When you get home,” Joyce went on, “I'm going to give you the chance to write about all of this on your blog. You're going to write a suicide note confessing to Rosie's murder. And then you're going to do what you should have done seven years ago. You're going to kill yourself the same way you killed Rosie.”

Nessa was less than a mile from home now, and she was filled with the desperate and threadbare hope that her own mother would recognize her, would realize her mistake. That it could be true that her mother loved her this much that she would commit murder to avenge her.

“I've tried and tried to help you redeem yourself on your own,” Joyce said. “To do the right thing. I set up circumstances that I thought would put enough pressure on you so that you'd self-­medicate—­”

“You murdered John,” Nessa whispered into the phone.

But Joyce couldn't go off-­book. “But no matter what we did, you wouldn't start using again. We called Child Ser­vices anonymously. Sent you the syringe. Put the heroin in your living room.”

We?

But before the word had fully formed itself in her head, Nessa knew who the other half of
we
was.

BIG on the guitar pick.

Weird eyes. Not just weird eyes, but different.
Different from one another.

Heterochromia. One blue eye, one brown.

BIG. Brandon Isaac Gereben.

Her brother.

She had to stop the car again because she couldn't see, couldn't handle the steering wheel, she was so racked with sobs. Her brother. Her family. Her blood.

“Don't stop,” Joyce said. “You have less than ninety seconds to get to your house, and you're stopping? You obviously care as little about your son as you do about—­”

A roar arose from Nessa's throat, filling the car and deafening her own ears as she jammed the Pacifica into gear and spun out the tires. It was the roar of a mother lion. The tires threw dust from the dirt road into the air, and the Pacifica fishtailed toward the house as she savagely wiped away her tears.

She raced toward her home and almost plowed into the side of it. Nessa jammed the Pacifica into Park, threw open the door, and ran without closing it or turning off the car. A clock ticked in her mind as she stumbled in the yard, willing herself not to fall or drop the phone, her son's lifeline.

“I see you've arrived,” Joyce said into the phone as Nessa opened the back door. “Welcome home, Candy.”