THE MOB CHASED her along the riverfront, their torches casting bright reflections in the nighttime waters of the Mississippi. Bernadette could feel her heart pounding in her chest as she ran from the shouts. She didn’t know why they were pursuing her. She couldn’t understand what they were yelling at her. The only word she could make out was the name they’d given her.
Monster.
She stopped running and turned to plead with them, ask them to spare her life. They froze fifty feet from where she stood. The hollering hushed. Bernadette looked into the crowd of men and women and children, their furious expressions illuminated and animated by the dancing flames. She recognized two of the faces: they belonged to the bums from the basement.
“Monster!” screamed a female voice in the crowd.
“Monster!” repeated a raspy male voice. One of the bums.
Suddenly the entire throng was chanting the word.
“Mon-ster! Mon-ster! Mon-ster! Mon-ster!”
“Why?” she yelled at them. “Why am I a monster?” “Mon-ster! Mon-ster! Mon-ster!”
At her side, her fists clenched in rage. She reached into her jacket, pulled out her Glock, and aimed into the center of the crowd. “FBI!” she hollered. “Drop your weapons!”
The chanting grew louder and faster. “Monster! Monster! Monster!”
She squeezed the trigger, and the crack of her gun silenced the throng. A small blond girl in a white dress and veil put her hands to her chest. A circle of blood appeared under her tiny fists. The stain widened and the girl’s face contorted. Then the child fell facedown on the ground.
“No!” Bernadette screamed, and threw her pistol and ran.
She could hear the villagers closing in on her, their voices loud with a new chant.
“Kill-er! Kill-er! Kill-er!”
“I’m not a killer,” Bernadette panted as she ran. “Not a killer. Not.”
The chant changed. “Kill her! Kill her! Kill her! Kill her!”
She spotted a dock up ahead and thumped onto the boards. At the end of the dock was a houseboat. Bernadette ran up to the front door and pounded with her fists. She heard music on the other side of the door, but no one answered her knock. She screamed the name of the only person she trusted. “Tony!” Bernadette yelled to the closed door. “Open up! Tony! Help me!”
The mob drew closer. Leading the charge was the blond girl, her dress dripping with blood. Raising her torch in the air, the child led her followers in a new chant, “Burn her! Burn her! Burn her!”
Bernadette flattened her back against the houseboat door and yelled, “No!”
The girl touched the torch to the dock, and an army of spiders spilled out of the fire. They rolled toward Bernadette like a gray, greasy wave. She collapsed against the houseboat door, closed her eyes, and curled her knees to her chest. Shuddering with horror, she felt the creatures enveloping her body. Biting her. A million tiny needles pricking her flesh. She took a final breath, and they invaded her nostrils, suffocating her.
HER EYES flying open, Bernadette bolted upright in bed. She’d kicked off her covers in her sleep. Though her loft was cool, her body was warm and covered with perspiration. She peeled off her wet nightshirt and tossed it onto the floor. Her heart was pounding like crazy, and she was panting as if she’d just finished a long run. She took a deep breath and let it out. Inhaled again, and let it out slowly. She swore she could smell something burning inside her condo. Had she left the oven on?
She slid off the mattress and took the stairs, hanging tightly onto the rails as she spiraled down. She flipped on the kitchen lights and checked the stovetop. No flame had been left burning on the range. She pulled open the oven door. Empty and cold. She slammed the door shut. Nothing had been left on during the night. She took down a tumbler, turned on the tap, and got a cold drink. It took three glasses of water to quench her thirst.
Exhausted but too tense to go back to bed right away, she stood at the counter and ran her fingers through her damp hair. She pressed her cheek with the back of her hand. Her face was feverish. “I’m losing my mind,” she said aloud.
Chapter 16
CREED FAILED TO make an appearance in the cellar Friday morning, and the construction noise had subsided. The jackhammer crew must have slept in. Enjoying the serenity, Bernadette sat at her computer to plug into government and other databases.
Professor Finlay Wakefielder had no criminal record. One speeding ticket three years ago. Married and divorced twice. No kids, or at least none that he claimed. Drove an eight-year-old Saab sedan. Lived in the Grove, an exclusive faculty neighborhood next to the university’s St. Paul campus. Ph.D. from Harvard University. Before coming to the University of Minnesota, served as an assistant professor in the department of English at Princeton. Scored numerous prizes and fellowships. Dissertation Writing Fellowship. Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Prize for Excellence in the Humanities. English Prize Fellowship. Published two books, one a history of poetry in the Midwest, the other a biography of the poet John Berryman.
The book about Berryman gave her pause. She remembered something about the famous poet and a bridge. She typed in Berryman’s name and read an online bio. In 1972 Berryman ended his life by leaping from the Washington Avenue Bridge—the same bridge from which the four Minnesota drowning victims had supposedly jumped.
She went to the university’s Web site and looked up the work phone number and address for the professor. Wakefielder’s office in Lind Hall, home to the University of Minnesota’s department of English, was barely a block from the bridge.
Next, research on the bridge itself. Even before the spate of coed drownings, the bridge was fraught with weird mojo. Despite cosmetic makeovers—the most recent being a coat of paint in the school colors of maroon and gold—the campus community complained that the structure had an indefinable bleakness about it. Certainly the girls weren’t the first to go over its railings. Students venturing on the bridge late at night reported hearing phantom footsteps behind them, supposedly the ghosts of those who had leaped or fallen from the bridge in years past.
“I wonder if Creed knows any of them,” she said out loud, and continued with her research.
SHE DROVE TO the east bank of the Minneapolis campus and parked the Crown Vic in the Church Street Garage, an underground ramp that was north of the university’s mall area. Before dropping in on the professor, she wanted to check out the bridge, which was at the south end of the mall.
She walked past Northrop Memorial Auditorium, a massive concert and dance venue that anchored the north end of the mall. Its wide steps led up to a front entrance lined with tall columns. Bernadette found it reminiscent of a Roman bathhouse on steroids. Other buildings on the mall echoed the design on a smaller scale, their fronts boasting tall columns, tall windows, and wide steps. She had no idea who the mall buildings were named for, but they all sounded sturdy and unassuming: Johnston Hall. Smith Hall. Walter Library.
The sidewalks of the grassy, tree-lined square were teeming with students lugging backpacks and books. Even in the bitter cold, some kids were tossing Frisbees on the grass or sitting outside with their morning coffee and Cokes.