Anatomy of Fear

36

The hotel was better than expected, a modern ten-story businessman’s hotel, sleek and superclean. I checked into my room: double bed, ER-sterile bathroom, TV the size of a mini drive-in theater. I asked the bellhop where I could buy a toothbrush and get a bite to eat and he directed me to a CVS and a local café, where I had a glass of Shiraz and a decent dinner spoiled by a young couple at the next table who were practically making out. I was going to tell them to get a room, but thought it would make me sound bitter, and maybe I was.

Back in the hotel, I watched the end of CSI, which did a good job of combining glamour and gore, but couldn’t concentrate. I was feeling antsy and frustrated, wondering why I’d come here when I should have been home chasing a phantom, which, according to the feds, I was no longer supposed to be doing.

I stared out the window, snow coming down, flickering like glitter in a snow globe.

The snowflakes turn to icicles, steam hissing as they hit the pavement. Somewhere salsa music is playing-the next room?-men and women laughing and dancing as the snow changes to water spurting from an open fire hydrant, spraying the night air with a million tiny diamonds. One of the dancers holds the sketch of my grandmother’s vision. It bursts into flames and burns. My eyes burn too, hot and tired. A woman dressed in white, candles all around her, whispers: Cuidado, cuidado.

The killer’s sketches are suddenly around me, flapping like injured birds. I grab one and it springs to life. But it isn’t one of the victims. It’s a different body, though one I know.

I turn and see a man with a gun aimed at the body. I try to stop him, but it’s too late.

The gunshots startled me awake.

I blinked, trying to gauge my whereabouts.

I was in the Boston hotel, steam hissing; voices and music coming from the television. I pulled myself up, shut off the TV, stood in the dark watching flakes of white snow flutter past a black window and looking at my reflection, ghostly and unformed. It gave me a chill, it was so much like the man I’d been trying to draw, there and not there, features blurred or missing.