Forty-five minutes later, they heard car tires on the driveway. David went outside to meet them. He came back in with six men. They were clearly armed and had what could only be described as a military demeanor. One of the men wore a suit. He was olive-skinned, graying at the temples.
“Mrs. Bateman,” he said. “I’m Mick Daniels. These men are here for your protection and to help me ascertain the facts.”
“I had a dream,” she found herself telling him.
“Honey,” said David.
“About the Montauk Monster. That it was sliding up the side of our house.”
Mick nodded. If he found this odd at all, he didn’t say so.
“You were sleeping,” he told her, “but some part of you heard something. It’s genetic training. An animal memory of spending a few hundred thousand years as prey.”
He had them show him their bedroom and then Rachel’s room, had them retrace their steps. Meanwhile, two of his men examined the perimeter. Another two set up a command center in the living room, bringing in laptops, telephones, and printers.
They met up again with the full group ten minutes later.
“A single set of footprints,” they were told by a black man working a piece of bubble gum, “and two deeper marks directly under the window. We think that’s from the ladder. Tracks lead to a smaller structure on the property, then disappear. We found a ladder inside. Extendable. Tall enough to reach the second floor, I think.”
“So he didn’t bring his own ladder,” said Mick, “he used one that was already here. Which means he knew it was here.”
“We had a rain gutter fall last weekend,” said David. “The landlord came and put it up, used a ladder. Not sure where he got it, but he drove up in a sedan, so he didn’t bring it with him.”
“We’ll look at the landlord,” said Mick.
“No visible tire marks on the road,” said a second man, holding a rifle. “Nothing fresh, at least. No sense of which direction he or they may have taken.”
“I’m sorry,” said Maggie, “but who are you people? Somebody took my baby. We need to call the police.”
“Mrs. Bateman,” said Mick.
“Stop calling me that,” she said back.
“I’m sorry, what would you like me to call you?”
“No. Just — will somebody please tell me what’s happening?”
“Ma’am,” Mick said, “I am a paid security consultant for the biggest private security firm in the world. Your husband’s employer retained my services at no cost to you. I served eight years with the Navy SEALs, and eight more with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’ve worked three hundred kidnapping cases with a very high rate of success. There is a formula at work here. As soon as we figure it out, I promise you we will call the FBI, but not as helpless bystanders. My job is to control the situation from now until we get your daughter back.”
“And can you do that?” Maggie said, as if from another dimension. “Get her back?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Mick. “I can.”
Chapter 26. Blanco
It’s the white walls that wake him. Not just in the bedroom; the whole apartment is embossed in pure ivory — walls, floors, furniture. Scott lies there, eyes open, heart beating fast. To sleep in white limbo, like a new soul suspended in ether waiting for a door to open, for the bureaucratic check box of body assignment, praying breathlessly for the invention of color, can drive a man mad apparently. Scott tosses and turns under white sheets on white pillows, his bed frame painted the color of eggs. At two fifteen a.m. he throws off the covers and puts his feet on the floor. Traffic sounds creep through the double-pane windows. He is sweating from the exertion of forcing himself to stay in bed, and he can feel his heart beating through the walls of his rib cage.
He goes to the kitchen, and considers making coffee, but it feels wrong somehow. Night is night and morning is morning and to confuse the two can lead to lingering displacement. A man out of time, phase-shifted, drinking bourbon for breakfast. There is an itch behind Scott’s eyes. He goes into the living room, finds a credenza, opens all the drawers. In the bathroom he finds six tubes of lipstick. In the kitchen he finds a black Sharpie and two Hi-Liters (pink and yellow). There are beets in the fridge, frazzled and fat, and he takes them out and puts a pot of water on the stove to boil.
They are talking about him on the television. He doesn’t need to turn it on to know that. He is part of the cycle now, the endless worrying. Whitewashed floorboards creak underfoot as he pads into the living room (white). The fireplace is still charred from recent use, and Scott crouches on the cool brick lip and searches the ashes. He finds a lump of charcoal by feel, pulling it forth like a diamond from a mine. There is a floor-length mirror on the far wall, and as he straightens he catches sight of himself. By coincidence his boxers are white and he wears a white T-shirt — as if he too is slowly being consumed by some endless nothing. Seeing himself in the mirror in this all-white world — a pale, white man draped in white cloth — he considers the possibility that he is a ghost. What is more likely, he wonders, that I swam for miles with a dislocated shoulder and a toddler on my back, or that I drowned in the churning salt, like my sister all those years back, her panicked eyes and mouth drawn under the greedy black water of Lake Michigan?
Charcoal in hand, he goes around the apartment turning on lights. There is an instinct to it, a feeling not exactly rational. Outside he can hear the grinding brakes of the day’s first trash truck, its geared jaws pulverizing the things we no longer need. The apartment now fully illuminated, he turns a slow circle to take it all in, white walls, white furniture, white floors, and this single turn becomes a kind of spin, as if once started it cannot be stopped. A white cocoon punctuated by black mirrors, window covers raised.
Everything capable of producing color has been piled on the low white coffee table. Scott stands with ashen charcoal in hand. He switches the lump from left to right, his eyes drawn to the feral black stain there on his left palm. Then, with gusto, he claps his dirty palm to his chest and draws it down across his belly, smearing black ash onto the cotton.
Alive, he thinks.
Then he starts on the walls.
* * *
An hour later he hears a knock on the door, and then the sound of the key in the lock. Layla enters, still dressed for evening in a short gown and high heels. She finds Scott in the living room, throwing beets at the wall. His T-shirt and shorts are ruined in the common parlance, or much improved in the eyes of this particular painter — stained black and red. The air smells vaguely of charcoal and root vegetables. Without acknowledging her arrival, Scott pads over to the wall and crouches, lifting the smashed tuber. Behind him, he hears footsteps in the hall, hears the sound of a breath drawn in. A startled rush.
He hears it and doesn’t hear it, because, at the same time, there is nothing but the sound of his own thoughts. Visions and memory, and something more abstract. Urgent — not in the sense of earth shattering, but as it feels to urinate finally after a long drive home, stuck in stop-and-go traffic, the long run to the front door, fumbling for keys, fly unbuttoned shakily on the hurried move. And then the artless stream. A biological necessity fulfilled. A light, once off, now turned on.
The painting is revealing itself to him with every stroke.
Behind him, Layla watches, lips parted, taken by a feeling she doesn’t really understand. She is an intruder on an act of creation, an unexpected voyeur. This apartment, which she owns and decorated herself, has become something else. Something unexpected and wild. She reaches down and unstraps her high heels, carrying them to the speckled white sofa.