The Timer Game (20 page)

“No, no. Already done. Ah, this. Is this what you need? For your mailbox?” The woman turned back the jacket tag and Grace saw the outline of a small key, attached with a strip of masking tape.

“God.” Grace swept everything into her shoulder bag. She ran.

The strip mall was a small L, and Grace ran past the Christian Science reading room, past the insurance brokers. She caught a blur of Bill’s stolid body, propped against his car across the street, pretending to read a newspaper. There was a UPS store that sold cards and bubble wrap, with a Xerox copy machine and notary.

And along one wall, small brass mailboxes.

Grace slammed her shoulder bag down on the sorting table people used to wrap packages. She spilled the timer out and picked it up and felt a surge of terror. It was whirring in a circle now.

Forty-five seconds. Forty-four
.

She snatched up the jacket and ripped off the tape. The key fell into her hand. It was a small, fat key engraved with the number 1227. It had to work. Had to. She ran along the rows of boxes, searching.

A doughy woman with pale eyes shot out from behind the counter. “Help you?”

It was the second row from the top. Grace’s hand shook. She inserted the key. It turned. She yanked open the door. The timer must have been electronically calibrated to the lock turning in the post office box; the instant she inserted the key, turned the lock, yanked open the door, the timer shuddered and went still, the fronds frozen in her hand. She stared at the numbers, fascinated. Her breath came in unsteady gusts. Two seconds.

Two seconds left on the timer.

Grace moaned and collapsed against the flat metal wall of post office boxes. The woman darted to her side, eyes wide with concern. “You okay? Need a doctor?”

Grace shook her head. She opened her fingers and looked at it again, still not believing how close she’d come to not making it.

It was hot inside, October heat trapped in the space, and the cashier had opened the back door for cross ventilation. A UPS man came in the back way and stopped in front of a high stack of boxes waiting to be picked up. He was in his midtwenties, with good muscles under his short-sleeved shirt, styled brown hair, and a pen tucked behind an ear. He leaned over the stack of boxes and used leg muscles to lift and Grace saw the firm flex of haunch as he transferred boxes onto his dolly. He piled them easily and wheeled them out the back door to his truck.

Grace unclenched her fingers and set the timer down. Two seconds. It took a moment to see the open mail door, key still in the lock. Something glowed inside the box. She didn’t want to do this. She really didn’t. She lifted it out.

A yellow cartoon hand—just a couple of fat fingers, really, like the kind she’d seen in ToonTown in Disneyland or a Chargers game—free-standing in poster board and Styrofoam, pointed toward the counter. Around the base of the hand someone had used a black marker to write the letters
s d n
.

“This is cool.” The cashier had picked up the palm tree timer, examining it closely. “What is this? A timer? Can I buy it from you?”

“Sorry.” She didn’t know if she was supposed to keep it. She took the timer back and dropped it into her bag, pointing at the initials on the finger.

“These your initials? SDN?”

The woman shook her head, losing interest. Grace numbly shoved everything back into her purse. A cyclist trotted into the shop, carrying a package under an oiled arm. The woman brightened and touched her hair, heading behind the counter. “Mel. Just in time. I was about to close things up.”

SDN. SDN. Through the back door, Grace saw the UPS guy slamming down the hatch on his truck. He went around to the front of the cab and got in.

A finger pointing toward the counter. What was she missing? Something. She scanned the boxes of small objects for sale on the counter: gag items, travel puzzles, key chains with tiny balls that rolled into sockets, truncated plush animals. Nothing with SDN.

The cyclist thumped his package down on the counter and bumped into Grace, knocking the cut-out from her grasp. It fell to the floor. The biker had a high-tech pair of Speedos, black and cobalt blue, and they both bent in unison to retrieve it. He was younger and faster and appeared—from this view—to shave his legs. Tanned and hairless. He snapped the cut-out back into Grace’s hand, full of apologies and good cheer. He’d given it to her upside down, the finger pointing out the back door now, toward the UPS van waiting to back up. It was a small back lot, and the van was moving carefully. Upside down, the lettering—she’d been so sure of that lettering, when she’d seen—
s d n—
became
u p s
.

Grace dropped the hand, scooped up her leather shoulder bag and ran through the back of the shop into the alley.

He was backing up now, the UPS guy, music cranked up, windows vibrating to the bass, lip-synching, his eyes on the rearview mirror, foot heavy on the pedal. Grace lunged. She banged onto the front window and he swerved and braked, startled. They stared at each other through the glass. She’d caught him by surprise and his first instinct was fear. It roiled up his face like a tidal wave, taking away his competency and training and leaving behind a kid. She smiled reassuringly and clambered off the front of his van. He switched off the ignition and opened his door, his face blankly neutral now, waiting for whatever came next.

“Do you have something for me? Grace Descanso.”

He frowned, shifted his weight, checked the seat next to him, glanced over his shoulder at the stacks of boxes. He kept frowning, but nicely, as if he really wanted to be of help but couldn’t, and was starting to shake his head when he swiveled forward in his seat and his hand fell on something between the seats. He pulled it out.

It was a UPS packet, slim cardboard. “That’s weird. It wasn’t here when I—” He scanned the name and stopped. “Descanso. Is that what you said?”

She nodded and he extended the packet. He had a slight lisp but his voice was strong and deep. He held out a clipboard and pen. “Sign here, please.”

“I don’t understand.” She scribbled her name on the line.

“Makes two of us.” He shrugged. He had an affable smile, all business. He checked his watch and scribbled his initials, already switching on the ignition.

“Where did you get this?”

“Beats me. Funny, it doesn’t have an address on it, just your name. And this. Says to open immediately.”

Grace stared at the package. It was cardboard, the size of a manila envelope, but lumpy. A thought whispered, steady and calm. If she hadn’t figured this out, the package would have gone back with the UPS man.

Game over.

She ripped open the envelope as the UPS truck rumbled away.

Inside was a typed note:
Drop your cell phone and the timer on the ground. Dump the PI and his pals or she dies.

Along with the note there was a set of keys to a car. A tag dangled from it with an address three blocks away, taking her even farther from where Bill waited and watched. She turned off her cell phone, crouched down, and left it and the timer in a patch of weeds.

A pain spiked her chest. Her body pinged with falling stars, dying sparks of energy. She was alone again; the only hope her daughter had of rescue was pinned on her and it seemed too small a save. She was physically not capable of holding it together much longer without a break. Was that part of it, the Spikeman planning to exhaust her until every resource was depleted? And then what? Trying to save Katie when she could no longer think or move or hope?

She started walking and then she broke into a run.

Chapter 22

Saturday, 5:07 p.m.

She found the Acura parked at a curb two blocks up from Blockbuster. Her mind had ceased sorting; she was numb, moving forward with no expectation. Inside the car, a cell phone rang. She couldn’t seem to grasp the rental car key correctly. It kept slipping. The phone continued ringing. She unlocked the car and slid onto the seat. Whoever had dropped it off had much longer legs. “Yes?”

The voice was tinny, distorted. “Very good, Grace. Nice save.”

“Where is she? Where’s my daughter?”

“It was inventive. Getting the detective involved. I’ll give you that much. That’s why I didn’t off your daughter immediately, even though you deserved it. I’d hate to end the game so soon. But really, what does it take, her finger in a box? Don’t try that again.”

Grace looked around the silent street. She was parked in front of a stucco apartment complex, ringed with a black steel fence. An elderly woman with hair as soft as dandelion fluff thumped down the steps, trailing a small poodle on a rhinestone leash.

“The game,” Grace repeated.

“What do you call it?”

She closed her eyes. “What do you want?”

“I’m not a monster.”

“Let my daughter go. You want me, right? Take me.”

“Oh, how touching. The mommy card, and so early. Very sweet.”

“How do I know she’s even alive?”

“You don’t.”

“God, please—”

“It’s not going to hurt. What happens.” He sounded petulant.

Grace blinked. A woman driving an SUV barreled past her and pulled into a driveway down the street. She hopped out and started hauling grocery bags out of the backseat.

“I’ll do whatever you want.”

That made him laugh. “Don’t worry about that, Grace. You will.” He clicked off.

She stared blankly at the phone. There had to be a timer somewhere. Numbly, she checked the storage area between the seats and the pockets on either door. She found it in the glove compartment under a AAA map of Los Angeles. It was a stopwatch, set to go off in forty-five minutes. But where was she supposed to go? Someplace in Los Angeles? She’d never make it in time. The way she drove, L.A. was at least two and a half hours away, with traffic. This was early evening on Saturday. And nothing was marked on the map, either. No circles, red marks.

The only thing she knew for sure was that she couldn’t go home again. She realized in that instant how very glad she’d been to see Warren, how safe she’d felt with Bill and the competency of the men wiring her house. She was alone again and afraid.

The setting sun cut a blinding beam through the windshield and Grace flipped down the visor. Clipped to the visor was a flyer. Only it wasn’t a flyer.

It was a color picture of Katie, swinging upside down in the tree fort in their backyard, holding on to her crown. Her hair had caught the light, and it almost blinded Grace, glints of red and spun gold and caramel, an explosion of curls. Katie looked dizzy with happiness.

He’d been there that morning, at Katie’s party. From the angle, he’d been on a boat. He’d shot a candid of her daughter on the day everything changed.

So. Grace had been within a boat’s length of the man who had stolen her daughter. Was Katie on a boat? Or underground. Grace had read cases of kids taken, trapped in coffin-sized spaces. She couldn’t think about that. She’d die if she thought about that. She took a steadying breath and turned the photo over.

The back, the side that had been slapped down onto the windshield, held an address and the name of a shop: Art Cry Galleria

__

It turned out to be a small gallery in Hillcrest specializing in sadomasochistic art. Grace had tucked the stopwatch into her pocket. She’d run into bad traffic on Washington and the usual parking congestion in Hillcrest, but she finally pulled into a spot at a curb three blocks from the shop. Her legs weren’t working properly. She stumbled a lot and she made her way carefully over the uneven sidewalks to the heavy chrome and glass door and pulled it open.

There was less than half an hour left to find the next clue.

The gallery was small, walls painted black and red. Hip-hop music throbbed from every speaker. A sweet-faced kid studded with piercings and dressed like a snake trotted over and asked if she could help. It came out as a lisp and Grace realized her tongue had been forked.

“I’m not sure,” Grace said, her eyes scanning exhibits. “Do you have anything for a Grace Descanso?”

The girl went away and asked the cashier as Grace went painstakingly around the room, going over every piece of sculpture, every painting on the wall, and each black-and-white photograph, a monotonous blur of knives and pincers and handcuffs, hunting for anything that could lead her to Katie. She hesitated at an exhibit consisting of nothing but blood spatters, as if a criminalist had slapped court exhibits between flats of acrylic. Was the Spikeman trying to tell her he’d hurt Katie?

The salesgirl came back. “He says no,” she said.

Grace nodded. “Thanks.” She glanced at the salesman. He had dead white skin and black hair and was thinner than healthy people usually were. He never looked at her.

Fourteen minutes left.

Two men in tank tops and earrings came in and browsed. Grace studied them carefully. Were they there to deliver a message? An elderly woman spilling out of a girdle came in and Grace pressed closer, listening. Picking up a birthday present for her son.

A present. Was that a code? It was Katie’s birthday. This terrible day.

Eleven minutes left.

There was a thick stack of Maplethorpe prints and S & M posters and Grace started at one end and methodically went through them. Nothing that remotely suggested Katie. Only images that planted disturbing pictures in her mind of what could be happening to her daughter at that moment.

Seven minutes.

The only thing she hadn’t checked yet was a rack of coming events that hung behind the counter. The salesman was ringing up a zucchini-sword acrylic statue for the woman. She stood at the counter and tugged violently on her girdle when she thought no one was looking. The zucchini was short and muscular and the sword was only nicked an inch toward the top, almost as if it were a circumcised zucchini, except that didn’t explain the straight pins. The woman buying it for her son liked it, that was clear. Grace stood off to the side as the platinum card went through, poring over the pamphlets, art exhibits, announcements for shows, advertisements for auctions, personal appearances by artists, bios. Her eyes went back and reread the third one from the bottom. Robert Harling Frieze.