Deal Breaker

Chapter 4

Damn him.

Jessica Culver sat in her family’s kitchen, in the very seat she had sat in innumerable times as a child.

She should have known better. She should have thought it through, should have come prepared for any occurrence. But what had she done instead? She had gotten nervous. She had hesitated. She had stopped for a drink in the bar below his office.

Stupid, stupid.

But that wasn’t all. He had surprised her, and she had panicked.

Why?

She should have told Myron the truth. She should have told him in a plain unemotional voice the real reason she was there. But she hadn’t. She had been drinking unaware, and suddenly he had appeared, looking so handsome and yet so hurt and-

Oh shit, Jessie, you are one fucked-up chick.

She nodded to herself. Yup. Fucked-up. Self-destructive. And a few other hyphenated words she couldn’t come up with right now. Her publisher and agent did not see it that way, of course. They loved her “foibles” (their term-Jessie preferred “fuck-ups”), even encouraged them. They were what made Jessica Culver such an exceptional writer. They were what gave Jessica Culver’s writing that certain “edge” (again, their term).

Perhaps that was so. Jessie really couldn’t say. But one thing was certain: These foibling fuck-ups had turned her life to shit.

Oh, pity the suffering artist! Thy heart bleeds for such torment!

She dismissed the mocking tone with a shake of her head. She was unusually introspective today, but that was understandable. She had seen Myron, and that had led to a lot of “what if-ing”-a verifiable avalanche of useless “what if-ing” from every conceivable height and angle.

What if. She pondered it yet again.

In her typically self-centered way, she had seen the “what if-ing” only in terms of herself, not Myron. Now she wondered about him, about what his life had really been like since the world crumbled down upon him-not all at once-but in small, decaying bits. Four years. She had not seen him in four years. She had shoved Myron into some back closet in her mind and locked the door. She’d thought (hoped?) that would be the end of it, that the door could stand up to a little pressure without opening. But seeing him today, seeing the kind, handsome face high above those broad shoulders, seeing the still why-me stare in his eyes-the door had blown off its hinges like something in a gas explosion.

Jessica had been overwhelmed by her feelings. She wanted to be with him so badly that she knew she had to get out right away.

Makes sense, she thought, if you’re a total fuck-up.

Jessica glanced out the window. She was waiting for Paul’s arrival. Bergen County police Lieutenant Paul Duncan-Uncle Paul to her, since infancy-was two years away from retirement. He had been her father’s closest friend, the executor of Adam Culver’s will. They had both worked in law enforcement-Paul as a cop, Adam as the county medical examiner-for more than twenty-five years.

Paul was coming to finalize the details for her father’s memorial service. No funeral for Adam Culver. He wouldn’t hear of it. But Jessica wanted to talk to Paul about another matter. Alone. She did not like what was going on.

“Hi, honey.”

She turned to the voice. “Hi, Mom.”

Her mother came up through the basement. She was wearing an apron, her fingers fiddling with the large wooden cross around her neck. “I put his chair in storage,” she explained in a forced matter-of-fact tone. “Just cluttering space up here.”

For the first time Jessica realized that her father’s chair-the one her mother must have been referring to-was gone from the kitchen table. The simple unpadded four-legged chair her father had sat in for as long as Jessica could remember, the one closest to the refrigerator, so close that her father could turn around, open the door, and stretch for the milk on the top shelf without getting up, had been taken away, stored in some cob-webbed corner of the basement.

But not so Kathy’s.

Jessie’s gaze touched down on the chair to her immediate right. Kathy’s chair. It was still here. Her mother had not touched it. Her father, well, he was dead. But Kathy-who knew? Kathy could, in theory, walk through the back door right this very minute, banging it against the wall as she always did, smile brightly, and join them for dinner. The dead were dead. When you lived with a medical examiner, you understood just how useless the dead were. Dead and buried. The soul, well, that was another matter. Jessie’s mom was a devout Catholic, attending mass every morning, and during crises like these her religious tenacity paid off-like someone who spent time in a gym finally finding a use for their new muscles. She could believe without question in a divine and joyous afterlife. Such a comfort. Jessica wished she could do the same, but over the years her religious fervor had become a strict couch potato.

Except, of course, Kathy might not be dead. Ergo the chair-Mom’s lantern kept lit to guide her youngest back home.

Jessica awoke most mornings bolting upright in her bed, thinking about-no, inventing new possibilities for-her younger sister. Was Kathy lying dead in a pit somewhere? Buried under brush in the woods? A skeleton gnawed on by animals and inhabited by maggots? Was Kathy’s corpse stuck in some cement foundation? Was it weighed down in the bottom of some river like the little undersea man in the living-room aquarium? Had she died painlessly? Had she been tortured? Had her body been chopped into small bits, burned, broken down with acid…

Or was she still alive?

That eternal spring.

Had Kathy possibly been kidnapped? Was she living in white slavery under the thumb of some Middle East sheikh? Or was she living chained to a radiator on a farm in Wisconsin like something on Geraldo? Could she have banged her head, forgotten who she was, and was now living as a street person with amnesia? Or had she simply run away to a different world?

The possibilities were endless. Even those lacking creativity can come up with a million different horrors when their loved one suddenly vanishes-or more painfully, a million different hopes.

Jessica’s thoughts were chased away by the tired chugging of a car engine. A familiar Chevy Caprice blanketed with tiny dents pulled up. It looked like a retrieval car at a driving range. She stood and hurried out the front door.

Paul Duncan was a stocky man, compact, with salt-and-pepper hair now turning defiantly toward salt. He walked purposely, the way cops do. He greeted her on the front stoop with a big smile and kiss on the cheek. “Hey, beautiful! How are you?”

She hugged him. “I’m okay, Uncle Paul,” she said.

“You look great.”

“Thanks.”

Paul shaded his eyes from the sun. “Come on, let’s go inside. It’s hot as hell out here.”

“In a minute,” she said, putting a hand on his forearm. “I want to talk to you first.”

“What about?”

“My father’s case.”

“I’m not handling that, honey. I don’t do homicides anymore, you know that. Besides, it would be a conflict of interest-me being Adam’s friend and all.”

“But you have to know what’s going on.”

Paul Duncan nodded slowly. “I do.”

“Mom said the police think he was killed in a robbery attempt.”

“That’s right.”

“You don’t believe that, do you?”

“Your father was robbed,” he said. “His wallet was gone. His watch. Even his rings. The guy stripped him clean.”

“To make it look like a robbery.”

Paul smiled then, gently-the way, she remembered, he had at her confirmation and Sweet Sixteen party and high school graduation. “What are you getting at, Jess?”

“You don’t find this whole thing odd?” she asked. “You don’t see a connection between this and Kathy?”

He stumbled a step back, as if her words had given him a gentle push. “What connection? Your sister vanished from her college campus. Your father was murdered by a robber a year and a half later. Where do you see a connection?”

“Do you really believe that they have nothing to do with each other?” she asked. “Do you honestly believe that lightning struck twice in the same place?”

He put his hands in his pockets. “If you mean do I think your family has been the victim of two separate awful tragedies, the answer is yes. It happens all the time, Jess. Life is rarely fair. God doesn’t go around divvying out the bad in equal doses. Some families go through life with nary a scratch. Some get too much. Like yours.”

“So it’s fate,” she said. “That’s your answer. Fate.”

He threw his hands up. “Fate, lightning striking twice-these are your phrases. You’re the writer here, not me. I just call it a tragedy. I just call it a tragic, somewhat bizarre coincidence. I’ve seen a lot stranger. So had your dad.”

The front door opened. Mom stood in the doorway. “What’s going on?”

“It’s nothing, Carol. We were just talking.”

Carol looked at her daughter. “Jessica?”

Her eyes stayed on Paul’s, probing. “Just talking, Mom.”

Jessica turned away and stepped back inside. Paul Duncan watched her, letting loose a silent breath. He had suspected she would be a problem-Jessica never accepted easy solutions to anything in life, even when the answer was simple. Yep, he had hoped it wouldn’t happen, but he had definitely foreseen this possibility.

He just wasn’t sure what he should do about it.

Midnight.

At ten P.M. Christian Steele had crawled under the blanket, read for ten minutes, and then switched off the light. Since then he had lain on his back in the dark, staring at the ceiling, not moving, not fooling himself into even hoping that sleep was imminent.

“Kathy,” he said out loud.

His mind floated about aimlessly, settling like a butterfly for only brief moments before moving on. Darkness surrounded him, but not silence. There was no such thing as silence at football camp. Christian heard kegs being thrown, loud music, laughter, singing, swearing. He could distinctly hear Charles and Eddie, his offensive tackles, in the next room. They were permanently set on loud, like a radio turned up before the knob was ripped out. Christian was not above partying too, having fun by consuming alcohol until he hugged the porcelain god and puked up his offering. But not tonight.

God, not tonight.

“Kathy,” he said again.

Was it possible? After all this time…

So many things were happening at once. School was over. The Titans’ minicamp began the day after tomorrow. The scrutiny of the press had grown more intense than ever. He liked the attention, liked being on the cover of Sports Illustrated, liked the awe in people’s faces when they spoke to him. Nice kid, they always said. Real nice. As though they expected him to be rude just because he could throw a pigskin with precision. As though he should somehow feel as though he belonged to a higher species, far above them, because he happened to be a good athlete.

Christian was excited. He was scared. He knew he had to think about the future. Myron had told him of the dangers and of how short-lived fame could be. Myron was, after all, a classic example. He had told Christian about the importance of cashing in now, that his career would at best last ten years. So much was at stake. So much. He was famous now, but there was a big difference between college famous and pro famous. Soon he’d have it all. Competition. Fame. Real money-not just the alumni secret handouts…

But so what?

“Kathy…”

His phone rang.

Christian shot up, his heart beating like a rabbit’s. Fast reflexes. Sometimes they played against you. It was only the phone. Probably Charles or Eddie telling him, hey, it’s party time! They’d both gotten drafted too. Charles had gone in the second round to Dallas. Eddie in the fifth to the Rams.

He picked up the phone. “Hello?”

No response.

“Hello?” he said again.

Nothing. But the phone had not been hung up. Someone was there, silently holding the receiver to their ear.

“Who is this?”

Nothing.

Christian hung up. He began to lie back down when the phone rang again. He picked up the receiver.

“Hello?”

Silence again. Christian tried to listen more closely. Nothing. Or-or was that breathing? Panic seized him. He couldn’t say why. It was just a prankster calling on his unlisted phone. It might even be Charles or Eddie playing some kind of joke. Nothing to get upset about.

Except he was upset.

He cleared his throat. “What do you want?”

Still nothing.

“If you call back again, I’ll call the cops.”

He slammed the phone down. His hand shook. He was just about to try to settle back down when he remembered something.

Star. Six. Nine.

The phone company had sent something in the mail today. There had been advertisements on the TV-a pregnant woman trying to get to the ringing phone, trudging across the room toward the phone, but when she arrived the caller had already hung up. Then what? She picked up the phone and the voice-over-Cliff Robertson’s or someone like that-said something like “You just missed the call. Was it important? Was it someone you wanted to talk to? There is only one way to find out. Press the star and then six and nine.” They demonstrated it on the screen now, in case anyone wasn’t sure how to use a phone. Then the voice-over continued. “You’ll be connected to your previous caller, even if the number is busy. We’ll keep dialing for you, leaving your phone line free to make or receive other calls.”

The pregnant woman listened to a phone ring and then spoke to her relieved husband, who was working on some drafting board at work.

Christian picked up the phone. Then he hit the star, the six, and the nine.

The phone rang.

He rubbed his chin. A moment later a robotic operator came on. “The number is currently busy. We will ring you back when the line is free. Thank you.”

Christian replaced the receiver. He sat up and waited. The partying was still going on. He could hear three or four distinct partying areas. Someone shouted, “Yahooo!” A window crashed. People cheered. His larger teammates were playing keg toss, a sort of discus throw involving beer kegs.

The phone rang.

He snatched the receiver as if it were a loose ball on the turf. The phone was ringing back the number-just like the pregnant lady’s on the television. After the fourth ring the phone was picked up.

An answering machine.

A voice said, “Hi. We’re not in right now. Please leave a message at the beep, and we’ll be sure to call you back. Thanks.”

The phone slipped from Christian’s grip. A chilly hand caressed the back of his neck. A sound-some kind of choking noise-escaped his lips. Christian tried to form words but he couldn’t.

The answering machine. The voice.

It was Kathy.