What Comes Next Read online

  “You look beautiful,” he said. “Do you remember when we went to the Cape in August and went skinny-dipping in the ocean that one night, and then couldn’t find our clothes in the dunes after the current knocked us down the beach?”

  Cassandra shook her head. “Of course I remember. It was our first summer together. I remember everything. But that’s not why I’m here. You know what you saw.”

  Adrian wanted to run the tips of his fingers down her skin so that he could remind himself of every electric touch from their past. But he was afraid that if he reached out she would disappear. He did not fully understand his relationship with her hallucination, what the rules were. But he knew that he did not want her to leave.

  “That’s not altogether true,” he replied slowly. “I’m not at all sure.”

  “I know it isn’t exactly your field,” Cassie said. “Not precisely. You were never one of the forensic boys—you know, the guys who liked to deconstruct serial killers and terrorists and then entertain their classes with gory stories. You liked all those rats in cages and mazes and figuring out what they were going to do with the right stimuli. But you absolutely know enough about abnormal psychology to assess the case at hand.”

  “It could have been anything. And when I called, the police told me—”

  Cassie interrupted him. She pushed her head back, another familiar gesture where she looked for answers in the ceiling or the sky. This would happen when he was being obstinate. She had been an artist, and she had an artist’s appreciation of events: Draw a line, make a stroke of color on a canvas, and it will all become clear. She always followed this look to the heavens gesture with something pointed and demanding. It was a habit that he’d loved because she had always been so absolutely certain.

  “I don’t care what they told you. She was there, on the side of the road, and then she was gone. It was a crime. It had to be. You witnessed it. By accident. Only you. So now you have a few stray pieces of a really difficult puzzle. It’s up to you. Put them together.”

  Adrian hesitated.

  “Will you help me? I’m sick. I mean, Possum, I’m really sick. I don’t know how much longer anything is going to work for me. Things are already sliding. Things are already coming unraveled. If I take this on—whatever it is—I don’t know that I can survive it . . .”

  “You were going to shoot yourself a few minutes ago,” Cassie said briskly, as if that explained everything. She raised her hand and gestured broadly toward the Ruger 9.

  “I wanted to be with you. And with Tommy. I didn’t think it made any sense to wait any longer.”

  “Except you saw the girl on the street and she disappeared and this is important.”

  “I don’t even know who she is.”

  “Whoever she is, she still deserves a chance to live. And you’re the only one who can give it to her.”

  “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Pieces of a puzzle. Save her, Adrian.”

  “I’m not a police detective.”

  “But you can think like one, only better.”

  “I’m old and I’m sick and I can’t think straight anymore.”

  “You can still think straight enough. Just this last time. Then it will all be over.”

  “I can’t do it alone.”

  “You won’t be alone.”

  “I could never save anyone. I couldn’t save you or Tommy or my brother or any of the people I really loved. How can I save someone I don’t even know?”

  “Isn’t that the answer we all try to find?”

  Cassie was smiling now. He knew that she knew that she had won the argument. She always won, because Adrian had discovered within the first few minutes of their years together that it gave him far more pleasure to agree with her than to fight with her. Adrian said, “You were so beautiful when we were young. I never could understand how someone as beautiful as you wanted to be with me.”

  She laughed. “Women know,” she said. “It seems a mystery to men, but it isn’t to women. We know.”

  Adrian hesitated. He thought for a moment that tears were welling up in his eyes, but he didn’t know what he had to cry about, other than everything.

  “I’m so sorry, Cassie. I didn’t mean to get old.”

  That sounded crazy. But it also made a curious sense to him.

  She laughed. He closed his eyes for a moment to listen to the sound. It was like an orchestra reaching for symphonic perfection.

  “I hate it that I’m all alone,” he said. “I hate it that you’re dead.”

  “This will bring us closer.”

  Adrian nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I think you are right.”

  He looked over at the bureau. The prescription scripts from the neurologist were gathered in a pile. He had meant to throw them away. Instead, he picked them up.

  “Maybe,” he said slowly, “some of these will buy me a little extra . . .”

  He turned, but Cassie had vanished from the bed. Adrian sighed. Get started, he told himself. There is so little time left.

  7

  She closed the door behind her and then stopped. She could feel a rush of excitement within her, and she wanted to savor it for a moment.

  Linda generally arranged things in precise order, even her passions. For a woman with extravagant desires and exotic tastes, she was dedicated to routine and regimentation. She liked to plan her indulgences, so that every step of the way she knew exactly what to expect and how it would taste. Instead of dulling sensations, this quality heightened them. It was as if these two parts of her personality were in constant battle, tugging her in different directions. But she loved the tension that it created within her; it made her feel unique, and it made her into the truly extraordinary criminal she believed herself—and Michael—to be.

  Linda imagined herself to be Faye Dunaway’s Bonnie to Michael’s Warren Beatty Clyde. She considered herself to be sensuous, poetic, and seductive. This wasn’t arrogance on her part as much as it was an honest appreciation of the way she looked and the effect she had on men.

  Of course, she didn’t care for anyone who stared at her. She cared only for Michael.

  She slowly let her eyes sweep over the basement room. Stark white walls. An old brown metal frame bed with a white sheet covering a dingy gray mattress. A portable camp toilet in the corner. Large overhead lights threw unrelenting brightness into every corner. The still, hot air smelled unpleasantly of disinfectant and fresh paint. Michael had done his usual good job at fixing everything up for the start of Series #4. She was always a little surprised by how handy he had become—his expertise was with the computers and Web operations that he had studied in college and graduate school. But he was also adept with an electric power drill and a hammer and nails. He was a regular jack-of-all-trades. Perhaps that was why she loved him as deeply as she did.

  Linda believed the two of them were linked in a way that defined special.

  She paused and took a detective’s inventory. What could she see in the room that gave the basement any sort of recognizable identity? What might show up in the background of the webcast that indicated anything about where they were or who they might be?

  She knew enough to realize that something as mundane as a pipe fitting or a water heater or a light fixture could lead an enterprising police officer in their direction—if one ever chose to look. The pipe fitting might be measurable in inches, not centimeters, which would tell this clever and deeply imagined detective—Linda liked to try to envision this person—that they were in the United States. The water heater could be manufactured for Sears and be a model that was distributed only in the eastern part of the United States. The light fixture might be identifiable from a lot shipped to the local Home Depot.

  Having those details might just bring this fictional detective closer. He would be
part Miss Marple, part Sherlock Holmes, with just a touch of gritty fake-slick television reality. He might affect a rumpled Columbo look, or maybe a high-tech, close-cropped Jack Bauer style.

  Of course, she reminded herself, he wasn’t really out there.

  No one was, except for the clientele. And they were lining up, ready, waiting for their credit card charges to be approved and then eager to watch What Comes Next.

  Linda shook her head and breathed in deeply. Seeing the world through the narrow lens of paranoia made her excited; the passion attached to Series #4 was created in great part by the utter anonymity of the setting. It created the blankest of canvases on which they could draw their show. There was no way anyone watching could ever tell with any certitude what was about to happen, which was its great attraction. Linda knew most Internet pornography was about being totally explicit—images that left no doubt whatsoever about what was going on; theirs was the exact opposite. It was about suddenness. The unexpected. It was about creativity. It was about invention.

  It could be about sex.

  It could be about control.

  It was about imprisonment.

  It was violent.

  It was definitely about life.

  It might also be about death.

  That was why they were so successful.

  She closed the door behind her. She took a moment to adjust the mask over her face; for this first moment, she had chosen a simple black balaclava that concealed her shaggy blond hair and had only a slit for her eyes. It was the sort of headgear favored by antiterrorist SWAT teams, and she was likely to wear it frequently throughout the duration of Series #4 even if it did feel tight and confining. Beneath that, she wore a white Hazmat suit constructed of processed paper that crinkled and made swishing noises as she took a step forward. The suit hid her shape; no one could tell if she was large or slight, young or old. Linda knew she had a considerable voluptuousness beneath the suit; wearing it was like teasing herself. The material pinched at her naked skin, like a lover interested in delivering small amounts of pain alongside larger amounts of pleasure.

  She tugged on surgical gloves. Her feet were encased in the floppy blue sterile slippers that were de rigueur in an operating theater. Beneath her mask she smiled, thinking, This is an operating theater.

  She took a few steps forward. I am newly beautiful, she thought.

  She turned to the figure on the bed. Jennifer, she reminded herself. No more. Now she is Number 4. Age: sixteen. A suburban girl from a cloistered academic community, plucked almost by happenstance from a street. She knew Number 4’s address, her home phone, her few friends, and much more already, all details she had gleaned from a careful examination of the contents of the girl’s backpack, cell phone, and wallet.

  Linda moved to the center of the room, still a dozen feet from the old iron bed. Michael had sunk rings into the wall behind the frame for the handcuffs. Like a television sitcom director, he had drawn a few faint chalk lines on the floor to indicate which camera would capture her image and placed X’s in tape at key spots to stand. Profile. Full frontal. Overhead. They had learned in the past that it was important always to remember what camera shot was available, and what it would show. Viewers expected many angles and professional camera work.

  As voyeurs, they expected the best, a constant intimacy.

  There were five cameras in the room, although only one was clearly prominent and immediately visible, the main fixed Sony HD camera on a tripod aimed at the bed. The others were minicams concealed in the ceiling overhead and in two corners of the artificial walls. Only one would pick up the entrance, and that one was saved for dramatic purposes, moments when either Michael or Linda was entering the room. It would titillate the viewers because something was going to take place. Linda knew that at this moment it was shut down. This visit was preliminary, just the first move in the feeling-out process.

  In her pocket was a small electronic remote control. She slipped her finger over a button that she knew would freeze the image being fed out electronically. She waited until the moment that the hooded girl nervously turned ever so slightly in Linda’s direction. Then she hit the button.

  They will know she heard something . . .

  . . . But they won’t know what.

  She and Michael had long before learned the advantages of the tease in sales.

  She walked slowly forward.

  The girl was following her movements beneath the mask encasing her head. She had not said anything yet. Fear made some people rattle on aimlessly and helplessly, begging, pleading, reverting to infancy, while others managed a sullen, doomed silence. She did not know what Number 4 would be like. She was the youngest subject they’d ever employed, which made it an adventure for Michael and her as well.

  Linda took up a position at the foot of the bed. She spoke in a flat monotone that concealed her own excitement. She did not raise her voice or emphasize any word. She remained utterly cold. She was practiced at the art of delivering threats, and equally practiced at carrying them out.

  “Do not say anything. Do not move. Do not scream or struggle. Just pay attention to everything I tell you and you will not be hurt. If you expect to live through this, you will do exactly as you are told at all times, regardless of what it is you are asked to do and what you might feel about doing it.”

  The girl on the bed stiffened and quivered but did not speak.

  “Those are the most important rules. There will be others later.”

  She paused. She half expected the girl to plead with her right at that moment. But Jennifer remained quiet.

  “From now on, your name is Number Four.”

  Linda thought she heard a small moan, muffled by the black hood. That was acceptable, even expected.

  “If you are asked a question, you must answer. Do you understand?”

  Jennifer nodded.

  “Answer!”

  “Yes,” she said rapidly, her voice gasping beneath the mask.

  Linda hesitated. She tried to imagine the panic beneath the headgear. Not like high school, little girl, is it?

  She did not say this out loud. Instead, she simply continued her monotone.

  “Let me explain something, Number Four. Everything you knew about your life before has now ended. Who you were, what you wanted to be, your family, your friends—everything that was once familiar—no longer exists. There is only this room and what happens in here.”

  Again, Linda examined Jennifer’s body language, as if looking for some clue that she understood.

  “From this moment, you belong to us.”

  The girl seemed to stiffen and freeze. But she did not cry out. Others had. Number 3 in particular had battled them almost every step of the way—fighting, biting, screaming—which, of course, hadn’t been an altogether bad thing once Michael and she had figured out what the rules had to be, because it created a different type of drama. That was part of the adventure and part of the attraction, Linda knew. Each subject demanded a different set of rules. Each was unique from the very beginning. She could sense excited warmth coursing through her own body but she controlled it. She looked over at the girl on the bed. She is listening carefully, Linda thought. Smart girl.

  Not bad, Linda decided right then. Not bad at all. She will be special.

  Jennifer screamed inwardly, as if suddenly she could let loose something within herself that reflected her terror and could travel beyond the mask, beyond the chains that confined her, past any walls and ceilings out somewhere where she might be heard. She thought that if she could just make some noise it would help her remember who she was and that she was still alive. But she did not. Outwardly, she choked back a sob and bit down hard on her lip. Everything was a question, nothing was an answer.

  She could sense the voice was moving closer. A woman? Yes. The woman in the
panel truck? It had to be.

  Jennifer tried to remember what she had seen. It was nothing more than a glimpse of someone older than her but not old like her mother, wearing a black knit cap pulled down over her hair. Blond hair. She pictured a leather jacket but that was all. The blow that had crashed into her face and rocked her had obscured everything else.

  “Here . . .” She heard the word, as if something was being offered to her, but she did not know what it was. She heard a metallic snipping sound, and she could not prevent herself from recoiling.

  “No. Do not move.”

  Jennifer froze.

  There was an instant—and then she could feel the loose folds of her mask being pulled forward. She was still unsure what was happening but she could hear the sound of scissors.

  A piece of the mask fell away. It was over her mouth. A small opening.

  “Water.”

  A plastic straw was thrust through the slit, bumping up against her lips. She was suddenly terribly thirsty, so parched that whatever was happening took a back seat to the desire to drink. She seized the straw with her tongue and lips and pulled hard. The water was brackish, with a taste she could not recognize.

  “Better?”

  She nodded.

  “You will sleep now. Later you will learn precisely what is expected of you.”