They had the stale, slightly staid aura of a Sherlock Holmes setup. Faintly, the rusty machinery of a hundred old detective novels could be heard, grinding into what passed for life. Nonetheless, in the twenty-first century any such thing had to be seen as a possible threat. At the very least, a malign hacker could have compromised the security of his system.
When his antivirus program discovered no loathsome substance hidden within his folders and files, Tim procrastinated a little further by calling his computer guru, Myron Dorot-Rivage. Myron looked like a Spaniard, and he spoke with a surprisingly musical German accent. He had rescued Tim and his companions at 55 Grand from multiple catastrophes.
Amazingly, Myron answered his phone on the second ring. ‘So, Tim,’ he said, being equipped with infallible caller ID as well as a headset, ‘tell me your problem. I am booked solid for at least the next three days, but perhaps we can solve it over the phone.’
‘It isn’t exactly a computer problem.’
‘You are calling me about a personal problem, Tim?’
Momentarily, Tim considered telling his computer guru about what had happened that morning on West Broadway. Myron would have no sympathy for any problem that involved a ghost. He said, ‘I’ve been getting weird e-mails,’ and described the four messages. ‘My virus check came up clean, but I’m still a little worried.’
‘You probably won’t get a virus unless you open an attachment. Are you bothered by the anonymity?’
‘Well, yeah. How do they do that, leave out their addresses? Is that legal?’
‘Legal schmegal. I could arrange the same thing for you, if you were willing to pay for it. But what I cannot do is trace such an e-mail back to its source. These people pay their fees for a reason, after all!’
Myron drew in his breath, and Tim heard the clatter of metal against metal. It was like talking to an obstetrician who was delivering a baby.
After hanging up, Tim noticed that three new e-mails had arrived since his last look at his inbox. The first, Monster Oral Sex Week, undoubtedly offered seven days’ free access to a porn site; the second, 300,000 Customers, almost certainly linked to an e-mail database; the third, nayrm, made the skin on his forearms prickle. The Sex and the Customers disappeared unopened into the landfill of deleted mail. As he had dreaded, nayrm proved, when clicked upon, to have arrived without the benefit of a filled-in subject line or identifiable e-mail address. It had been sent at 10:58 A.M. and consisted of three words:
hard death hard
Yo, Willy! You with the funny name! Are we interested in another journey back to the antiseptic corridors of western Massachusetts? An hour or two in the Institute’s game room?
No.
Don’t think about what might be hidden in empty buildings, okay?
That was the whole problem: what might be, could possibly be, and according to every variety of internal registration she possessed actually was at that very moment inside the warehouse located two and two-tenths of a mile north of the Union Street Pathmark. What she was thinking, what she unfortunately believed, was completely crazy. Her daughter, Holly, could not possibly be hiding or kept prisoner inside Michigan Produce. Her daughter was dead. Raw though it was, Holly’s death was not actually all that recent. She had been dead for two years and four months. Along with James Patrick, Willy’s husband, Holly had been gunned down in the back of a car, soaked with gasoline, and set on fire. That was that. No matter how deeply they were loved, children who had been shot to death and set on fire did not come back. As a doctor (whose name, Bollis, Willy wouldn’t wish on a two-headed dwarf) in the Berkshires village of Stockwell could explain to any party in need of explanation, the belief that one’s child had returned from the realm of the dead not as a ghost but a living being could be no more than the product of a wish bamboozled into mistaking itself for fact.
Willy took in the produce warehouse, saw the letters pulse above the high row of windows, and knew beyond any possibility of a doubt—apart, of course, from its not being true—that her daughter was in there. Holly cowered at the back of a storeroom, or she was hidden in a closet, or beneath the desk in an empty office. Or in some other clammy bardo from which her mother alone could rescue her.
Willy grasped the car’s door handle, and sweat burst out across her forehead. If she opened the door, out she would go, her shaky control over her actions vanished altogether. Brainless as a falling meteor would she race toward the warehouse, brave little Willy, searching for a way to break in.
If she were ever to give in to this disastrous impulse, she realized, it would happen at night, when the warehouse was empty.
In the night would she pull the curved spoon of the door handle from its recessed pocket, releasing the catch, opening the door, thereby creating a space immediately to be filled by her body. As if scripted in advance, the whole doomed enterprise would follow. Half of her agony lay in its own uselessness; grief led people to do things they understood were hopelessly stupid. Even worse, she knew that should she succumb, her nighttime entry would trigger an alarm. She would attempt to conceal herself, would be discovered and taken to the police station, there to try to explain herself.
After his return from England, or France, or wherever his mysterious errands had taken him, maybe Mitchell Faber could talk her out of custody, but then she would have to face Mitchell. In almost every way, her husband-to-be was more threatening than the local cops.
Willy had no doubt that a brush with the police would have a dire effect on Mitchell. Given his capacity for well-banked fury, it would take her weeks to worm her way back into the sunlight. Unlike her late husband, Mitchell was dark of eye, dark of hair, dark dark dark of character. His darkness protected her, she felt; it was on her side and alert to threat, like a pet wolf. Far better not to attract its dead-level glare. For a person who appeared to wield a great deal of influence, Mitchell Faber refused the limelight and demanded to live in the shadows at the side of the stage.
Willy released the handle and grasped the steering wheel with both hands. This felt like progress, and at the same time like an unimaginable betrayal. Although the temperature had dropped, slick moisture clung to her face like a washcloth. She could all but hear Holly’s clear, high voice, calling out to her. How could she turn her back on her daughter? Her left hand drifted to the handle again. Only a massive effort of will permitted her to pull her hand back to the wheel. For a second or two, she granted herself leave from rationality and howled like an animal stuck in a trap. Then she shut her mouth, forced herself to turn the key, and put the car in reverse. Without looking at the rearview mirror, she backed away from the building. On the lot, the surfaces of all the puddles seemed to shiver in rebuke.
Driving too quickly, she bumped her tires against the curb. When she shot forward, fleeing a sound audible only in her head, the front of her car crashed down onto the road, and she gave the inside of her cheek a quick, sharp bite. The pain in her mouth helped her through the dangerous two and two-tenths miles to the Pathmark. After that, each passing mile brought her a greater degree of clarity. It was as though she had been in a trance, no longer responsible for her thoughts and actions.
Willy drove the rest of the way home in a complicated mixture of relief and bright panicky alarm. Very narrowly,