Riptide (3 page)

She closed her eyes. She'd thought and thought about why, but there wasn't anything. Nothing at all. He'd targeted her, but why? She shook her head. “At first he said he wanted to know me. What does that mean? If he wanted that, why wouldn't he just come over and introduce himself? If the cops wanted a nutcase to send to you, they should find him. What does he really want? I just don't know. If I even had a supposition about it, I'd throw it out there, believe me. But the boyfriend thing? No, I don't believe that.”

He sat forward, his fingertips pressed together, studying her. What did he see? What was he thinking? Did she sound insane? Evidently so, because when he said very quietly, gently even, “You and I need to talk about you, Ms. Matlock,” she knew he didn't believe her, probably hadn't believed her for a minute. He continued in that same gentle voice, “There's a big problem here. Without intervention, it will continue to get bigger and that worries me. Perhaps you're already seeing a psychiatrist?”

She had a big problem? She rose slowly and placed her hands on his desktop. “You're right about that, doctor. I do have a big problem. You just don't know where the problem really is. That, or you refuse to recognize it. That makes it easier, I guess.”

She grabbed up her purse and walked toward the door.
He called after her, “You need me, Ms. Matlock. You need my help. I don't like the direction you're going. Come back and let me talk to you.”

She said over her shoulder, “You're a fool, sir,” and kept walking. “As for your objectivity, perhaps you should consult your ethics about that, Doctor.”

She heard him coming after her. She slammed the door and took off running down the long dingy hallway.

B
ecca kept walking, her head down, out the front doors, staring at her Bally flats. From the corner of her eye, she saw a man turn away from her, quickly, too quickly. She was at One Police Plaza. There were a million people, all of them hurrying, like all New Yorkers, focused on where they were going, wasting not an instant. But this man, he was watching her, she knew it. It was him, it had to be. If only she could get close enough, she could describe him. Where was he now?

Over there, by a city trash can. He was wearing sunglasses, the same opaque aviator glasses, and a red Braves baseball cap, this time backward. He was the bad guy in all of this, not her. Something hit her hard at that moment, and she felt pure rage pump through her. She yelled, “Wait! Don't you run away from me, you coward!” Then she started pushing her way through the crowds of people to where she'd last seen him. Over there, by that building, wearing a sweatshirt, dark blue, long-sleeved, no windbreaker this time. She headed that way. She was cursed, someone elbowed her, but she didn't care. She would become an instant New Yorker—utterly focused, rude if anyone dared to get in her way. She made it to the corner of the
building, but she didn't see any dark blue sweatshirt. No baseball cap. She stood there panting.

Why didn't the cops believe her? What had she ever done to make them believe she was a liar? What had made the Albany cops believe she'd lied? And now, he'd murdered that poor old woman by the museum. She wasn't some crazy figment in her mind, she was very real and in the morgue.

She stopped. She'd lost him. She stood there a long time, breathing hard, feeling scores of people part and go around her on either side. Just two steps beyond her, the seas closed again.

Forty-five minutes later, Becca was at Lenox Hill Hospital, sitting beside her mother's bed. Her mother, who was now in a near-coma, was so drugged she didn't recognize her daughter. Becca sat there, holding her hand, not speaking about the stalker, but talking about the speech she'd written for the governor on gun control, something she wasn't so certain about now. “In all five boroughs, handgun laws are the same and are very strict. Do you know that one gun store owner told me that ‘to buy a gun in New York City, you have to stand in a corner on one leg and beg'?”

She paused a moment. For the first time in her life, she desperately wanted a handgun. But there was just no way she could get one in time to help. She'd need a permit, have to wait fifteen days after she'd bought the gun, and then hang around for probably another six months for them to do a background check on her. And then stand on one leg and beg. She said to her silent mother, “I've never before even thought about owning a gun, Mom, but who knows? Crime is everywhere.” Yes, she wanted to buy a gun, but if she did finally manage to get one, the stalker would have long since killed her. She felt like a victim waiting to happen and there was nothing she could do about it. No one would help her. She was all she had, and in terms of getting a hold of a gun, she'd have to go to the street. And the thought of going up to street guys and asking them to sell her a gun scared her to her toes.

“It was a great speech, Mom. I had to let the governor straddle the fence, no way around that, but I did have him say that he didn't want guns forbidden, just didn't want them in the hands of criminals. I did pros and cons on whether the proposed federal one-handgun-a-month law will work. You know, the NRA's opinions, then the HCI's—they're Handgun Control, Inc.”

She kept talking, patting her mother's hands, lightly stroking her fingers over her forearm, careful not to hit any of the IV lines.

“So many of your friends have been here. All of them are very worried. They all love you.”

Her mother was dying, she knew it as a god-awful fact, as something that couldn't be changed, but she just couldn't accept it down deep inside her where her mother had always been from her earliest memories, always there for her, always. She thought of the years ahead without her, but she simply couldn't see it at all. Tears stung her eyes and she sniffed them back. “Mom,” she said, and laid her cheek against her mother's arm. “I don't want you to die, but I know the cancer is bad and you couldn't bear the pain if you stayed with me.” There, she'd said the words aloud. She slowly raised her head. “I love you, Mom. I love you more than you can imagine. If you can somehow hear me, somehow understand, please know that you have always been the most important person in my life. Thank you for being my mother.” She had no more words. She sat there another half hour, looking at her mother's beloved face, so full of life just a few weeks ago, a face made for myriad expressions, each of which Becca knew. It was almost over, and there was simply nothing she could do. She said then, “I'll be back soon, Mom. Please rest and don't feel any pain. I love you.”

She knew that she should run, that this man, whoever he was, would end up killing her and there was nothing she could do to stop him. If she stayed here. Certainly the police weren't going to do anything. But no, she wasn't about to leave her mother.

She rose, leaned down, and kissed her mother's soft, pale cheek. She lightly patted her mother's hair, so very thin now, her scalp showing here and there. It was the drugs, a nurse had told her. It happened. Such a beautiful woman, her mother had been, tall and fair, her hair that unusual pale blond that had no other colors in it. Her mother was still beautiful, but she was so still now, almost as if she were already gone. No, Becca wouldn't leave her. The guy would have to kill her to make her leave her mother.

She didn't realize she was crying again until a nurse pressed a Kleenex into her hand. “Thank you,” she said, not looking away from her mother.

“Go home and get some sleep, Becca,” the nurse said, her voice quiet and calm. “I'll keep watch. Go get some sleep.”

There's no one else in the world for me,
Becca thought, as she walked away from Lenox Hill Hospital.
I'll be alone when Mom dies.

Her mother died that night. She just drifted away, the doctor told her, no pain, no awareness of death. An easy passing. Ten minutes after the call, the phone rang again.

This time she didn't pick it up. She put her mother's apartment on the market the following day, spent the night in a hotel under an assumed name, and made all the funeral arrangements from there. She called her mother's friends to invite them to the small, private service.

A day and a half later, Becca threw the first clot of rich, dark earth over her mother's coffin. She watched as the black dirt mixed with the deep red roses on top of the coffin. She didn't cry, but all of her mother's friends were quietly weeping. She accepted a hug from each of them. It was still very hot in New York, too hot for the middle of June.

When she returned to her hotel room the phone was ringing. Without thinking, she picked it up.

“You tried to get away from me, Rebecca. I don't like that.”

She'd had it. She'd been pushed too hard. Her mother
was dead, there was nothing to stay her hand. “I nearly caught you the other day, at One Police Plaza, you pathetic coward. You jerk, did you wonder what I was doing there? I was blowing the whistle on you, you murderer. Yeah, I saw you, all right. You had on that ridiculous baseball cap and that dark blue sweatshirt. Next time I'll get you and then I'll shoot you right between your crazy eyes.”

“It's you the cops think is crazy. I'm not even a blip on their radar. Hey, I don't even exist.” His voice grew deeper, harder. “Stop sleeping with the governor or I'll kill him just like I did that stupid old bag lady. I've told you that over and over but you haven't listened to me. I know he's visited you in New York. Everyone knows it. Stop sleeping with him.”

She started laughing and couldn't seem to stop. She did only when he began yelling at her, calling her a whore, a stupid bitch, and more curses, some of them extraordinarily vicious.

She hiccuped. “Sleep with the governor? Are you nuts? He's married. He has three children, two of them older than I am.” And then, because it no longer mattered, because he might not really exist anyway, she said, “The governor sleeps with every woman he can talk into that private room off his office. I'd have to take a number. You want them all to stop sleeping with him? It'll keep you busy until the next century and that's a very long time away.”

“It's just you, Rebecca. You've got to stop sleeping with him.”

“Listen to me, you stupid jerk. I would only sleep with the governor if world peace were in the balance. Even then it would be a very close call.”

The creep actually sighed. “Don't lie, Rebecca. Just stop, do you hear me?”

“I can't stop something I've never even done.”

“It's a shame,” he said, and for the first time, he hung up on her.

That night the governor was shot through the neck outside the Hilton Hotel, where he was attending a fundraiser
for cancer research. He was lucky. There were more than a hundred doctors around. They managed to save his life. It was reported that the bullet was fired from a great distance, by a marksman with remarkable skill. They had no leads as yet.

When she heard that, she said to the Superman cartoon character playing soundlessly on the television, “He was supposed to go to a fundraiser on endangered species.”

That's when she ran. Her mother was dead and there was nothing more holding her here.

To Maine, to find sanctuary.

Riptide, Maine
June 22

B
ecca said, “I'll take it.”

The real estate broker, Rachel Ryan, beamed at her, then almost immediately backpedaled. “Perhaps you're making this decision too quickly, Ms. Powell. Would you like to think about this for a bit? I will have everything cleaned, but the house is old and that includes all the appliances and the bathrooms. It's furnished, of course, but the furniture isn't all that remarkable. The house has been empty for four years, since Mr. Marley's death.”

“You told me all that, Mrs. Ryan. I see that it's an old house. I still like it, it's charming. And it's quite large. I like a lot of space. Also it's here at the end of the lane all by itself. I do like my privacy.” Now, that was an understatement but nonetheless the truth. “A Mr. Marley lived here?”

“Mr. Jacob Marley. Yes, the same name as in
A Christmas Carol.
He was eighty-seven years old when he passed away in his sleep. He kept to himself for the last thirty years or so of his life. His daddy started the town back in 1907, after several of his businesses in Boston were burned to the ground one hot summer night. It was said his enemies were responsible. Mr. Marley Senior wasn't a popular man. He was one of those infamous robber barons. But he
wasn't stupid. He decided it was healthier to just leave Boston and so he did, and came here. There was already a small fishing village here, and he just took it over and renamed it.”

Becca patted the woman's shoulder. “It's all right. I've thought about it, Mrs. Ryan. I'll give you a money order since I don't have a bank account here. Could it be cleaned today so I can move in tomorrow afternoon?”

“It will be ready if I have to clean it myself. Actually, since it's summer, I can round up a dozen high-schoolers and get them right over here. Don't you worry about a thing. Oh yes, there's the most adorable little boy who lives not far from here, over on Gum Shoe Lane. I'm not really his aunt but that's what he calls me. His name is Sam and I watched him come into this world. His mother was my best friend and I—”

Becca raised her brow, listening politely, but evidently Rachel Ryan was through talking.

“All right, Ms. Powell, I will see you in a couple of days. Call me if there are any problems.”

And it was done. Becca was the proud renter of a very old Victorian jewel that featured eight bedrooms, three spacious bathrooms, a kitchen that surely must have been a showplace before 1910, and a total of ten fireplaces. And as she'd told Rachel Ryan, it was very private, at the end of Belladonna Drive, no prying neighbors anywhere near, and that's what she wanted. The nearest house was a good half mile away. The property was bordered on three sides by thick maple and pine trees, and the view of the ocean from the widow's walk was spectacular.

She hummed when she moved in on Thursday afternoon. She even managed to work up a sweat. Even though she wouldn't use them, she cleaned the bedrooms just because she wanted to. She wallowed in all the space. She never wanted to live in an apartment again.

She'd bought a gun from a guy she met in a restaurant in Rockland, Maine. She'd taken a big chance, but it had, thank God, worked out. The gun was a beauty—a Coonan
.357 Magnum automatic, and the guy had taken her just next door, where there was a sports shop with an indoor range, and taught her how to shoot. He'd then asked her to go to a motel with him. He was child's play to deal with after the maniac in New York. All she'd had to do was say no very firmly. No need to draw her new gun on the guy.

She gently laid the Coonan in the top drawer of her bedside table, a very old mahogany piece with rusted hinges. As she closed the drawer she realized that she hadn't cried when her mother died. She hadn't cried at her funeral. But now, as she gently placed a photograph of her mother on top of the bedside table, she felt the tears roll down her cheeks. She stood there staring down at her mother's picture, taken nearly twenty years before, showing a beautiful young woman, so fair and fine-boned, laughing, hugging Becca against her side. Becca couldn't remember where they were, maybe in upstate New York. They'd stayed up there for a while when Becca was six and seven years old. “Oh, Mom, I'm so sorry. If only you hadn't locked your heart away with a dead man, maybe there could have been another man to love, couldn't there? You had so much to offer, so much love to give. Oh God, I miss you so much.”