"Tell me about Tanjy," Serena said.
"As far as I can tell, she left her place at ten o'clock on Monday night. She took her car, and that's the last anyone saw of her."
"Did you get any hits on the car?"
"No, we've got alerts on it all over the five-state area, and the media has picked up on it, too. So far, nothing. There hasn't been any activity on her credit cards or bank accounts. Her cell phone hasn't been used since Monday night." He added, "I did find several calls to Eric over the last few weeks."
"Do you know what was going on between them?"
"Abel thinks it was an affair."
"Could Tanjy have killed Eric?"
"That was my first thought, but there isn't any evidence that she did."
"Except you say she's unstable," Serena said. "Maybe even violent."
"She's a strange girl." He waited several beats and then added, "Look, don't take this the wrong way. I'm just trying to understand who Tanjy was, so help me out here. Do women really fantasize about rape?"
Serena froze. She rolled away. "That's an ugly question."
"I know, I'm sorry."
"You know what Blue Dog and my mother did to me in Phoenix."
"I know."
She got out of bed. The frigid air raised gooseflesh on her skin. She went to the window and pushed aside the curtains that looked out toward the trees and scrub behind the cottage. She could see her own reflection dimly in the glass. "There's nothing even remotely erotic about rape. I don't understand how any woman could think so."
"I'm with you, but I've seen the bulletin boards where Tanjy was posting her stories. She wasn't the only one."
Serena didn't reply. Jonny came up behind her, laying his hands on her shoulders. Instinctively, she shrugged them away.
"I hope you don't think I ever wanted to do it with that bastard," she said.
"Of course not."
"The first therapist I ever went to asked me that once. He asked me if I ever had an orgasm with Blue Dog."
"Son of a bitch."
"Just to be clear, my answer was no. Then it was goodbye."
"I wasn't trying to get you upset. I just need to get inside Tanjy's head."
Serena turned to face him. "I'm not upset."
"No?"
"I'm talking about it. A year ago, I wouldn't have been able to do that."
He put his arms around her. She knew that he expected her to cry, but she didn't have any tears inside. She was angry; she would never entirely escape the anger. But what happened to her when she a teenager was over. Her mother was dead. Blue Dog was dead, too. Her past was nothing but bad memories that would always be a part of who she was, but not the most important part, not the part that controlled her.
"Come to bed," she said.
She led him back, and she rolled over on top of him under the blanket and made love to him quickly and silently, until they were both dewy with sweat and ready to sleep. She slid off him, and she was just drifting away when Jonny mumbled something groggily into her ear.
"Put one word in the box," he said.
About Dan. About her midnight rendezvous.
She whispered back, hoping he'd still be able to sleep, "Blackmail."
17
Maggie was dreaming again.
An array of six men, naked and wearing gold masks, surrounded her bed, two on each side. They had dead eyes that reminded her of fish heads on the beach, milky skin with swollen bellies, and limp members hanging uselessly between their legs. They ogled her nude body. The two at the head of the bed parted, forming a gap in their ranks, and Eric stepped between them with her gun in his hand. He aimed it at her chest.
"I'm sorry, Nicole," he told her.
A flash of fire belched from the gun barrel. Maggie looked down, expecting to see a burnt, gaping wound in her torso, but saw only her naked breasts. She raised her hands to touch herself, and then she realized that she had no hands, only bloody stumps unevenly hacked off, leaving nothing but bone and blood. She looked up at the mirror above her bed and realized she had no head, too. She was a limbless dead trunk, with no mouth to scream.
Maggie screamed anyway and shocked herself awake.
She was sprawled on the bed on top of the covers, taking loud, open-mouthed breaths, like a fish. Slowly, the images faded to gray ash and sank back into her unconscious. She was alone and disoriented.
Maggie got out of bed and went to the bedroom door. She checked the heavy chair wedged under the doorknob, then sighed and rubbed her face with her small hands. She turned and leaned against the wall, which was papered in a forest-green Victorian floral pattern, and slid down until she was seated on the floor.
She was like a stranger to herself, acting like a victim, letting her fears win.
When you were a cop, you didn't admit to being afraid of the dark. The dark was full of things you had to face and overcome. For weeks, though, darkness had been her enemy. She woke up every hour from nightmares. Since Eric's death, she had barricaded herself in her own room at night.
That wasn't how she wanted to live her life. She was not Abel's ex-partner Nicole, not guilty of killing her husband, not a girl who cried on the floor and cowered in corners.
"To hell with this," Maggie said aloud.
She was mad enough to fight back.
She pushed herself to her feet and ripped the chair away from the door. It toppled onto the wooden floor with a bang. She flung the bedroom door open. The hallway and the stairs to the first floor were inky-black. Without turning on a light, she squared her shoulders and felt her way to the staircase, where she grabbed the handrail and marched downstairs. A cloud of fear wrapped around her body like a fog, but she shrugged off the sensation and went to the kitchen. When she turned on the light, the monsters scattered like roaches. The white-tiled room was bright and safe.
Maggie made herself a mug of green tea and put a salt bagel in the toaster. She sat quietly at the butcher block table, sipping the delicate liquid and crunching on the dry bagel. Her eyes were drawn to a photograph of herself and Eric pinned under a magnet on the refrigerator, and it made her lonely. They were smiling, their faces beet-red from sunburn. The picture was from a trip to Maine eighteen months ago, the last of the good times, a little sweet memory before things began to fall apart. They were in love back then, holding hands as they climbed over rocks on the beach, telling dirty jokes to each other over lobster dinners, having let-it-all-go sex that was so crazy and loud that the neighbors in the next room at the bed-and-breakfast applauded when they were done.
"Oh, Eric," she murmured to herself.
Maggie felt something wet on her cheeks, and when she touched her skin, she realized she was crying.
She didn't want to see his face in her mind, but there he was. She wished she could forget his booming laugh, but it rippled through her brain as if he were standing next to her. She could feel the solid strength of his swimmer's arms, holding her. His ghost, the fleeting spirit of the days when everything seemed perfect together, made her realize what she had lost. Not just with his death, but in the chasm that had opened up between them.
If only they could have stayed in Maine and never come back home. If only the last year had never happened.
She got pregnant on that trip. She was nearly thirty-three years old, and once she felt a baby growing inside her, she realized how much she wanted it. She was ready for a child in her life. So was Eric. He convinced her to leave the police force, and at the time, she was happy to go. Stride was in Las Vegas with Serena, and the prospect of doing her job without him weighed on her mind.
The pregnancy didn't go well. She miscarried in the third month.
That happened all the time, the doctors told her. She was anxious to try again. In the meantime, Stride came back from Vegas to take over his old job, and Maggie rejoined the force. When they were together again, she felt renewed, and when she got pregnant again in the winter, she had no intention of giving up her job or doing anything but taking a short leave and getting back on the street.