Death Match

EIGHTEEN

By the time Lash pulled into his driveway it was almost seven-thirty, and the curtain of night was dropping over the Connecticut coastline. He turned off the engine and sat for a moment, listening to the tick of cooling metal. Then he stepped out and walked wearily to the house. He felt drained, as if the sheer volume of technological marvels he’d seen today had temporarily dulled his capacity for wonder.

The house smelled of the lingering smoke from a Sunday fire. Lash turned on the lights and made his way back to the small office that adjoined his bedroom, the weight of the bracelet on his wrist still strange. He picked up the phone and dialed; discovered there were fifteen waiting messages; then sat down, steeling himself for the task of plowing through them.

It took surprisingly little time. Four had been telemarketers and six others were simply hang-ups. There was, in fact, only one message that had to be dealt with right away. He reached for his address book, then dialed the home number of Oscar Kline, the covering psychologist.

“It’s Kline,” came the clipped voice.

“Oscar, this is Christopher.”

“Hey, Chris. How’s it going?”

“It’s going.”

“Everything all right? You sound tired.”

“I am tired.”

“I’ll bet you were up all night, working on this research project you’re being so secretive about.”

“Something like that.”

“Why bother? I mean, you don’t need the fame — not after that book of yours. And you don’t need the money, God knows you live like a monk in that Westport cloister.”

“It’s hard to drop something like this once you’ve gotten involved. You know how these things are.”

“Well, there’s one good reason I can think of. Your practice. After all, this isn’t August, patients expect us to be around. You miss one session, fine. But two? People get restless. There were a couple of loudmouths in group today, troublemakers.”

“Let me guess. Stinson.”

“Yes, Stinson. And Brahms, too. You miss another, it’s going to get serious.”

“I know. I’m trying hard to get this wrapped up before that happens.”

“Good. Because otherwise I’m going to have to off-load some of them onto Cooper. And that wouldn’t be a pretty sight.”

“You’re right, it wouldn’t. I’ll be in touch, Oscar. Thanks for everything.”

As Lash hung up and began to walk away, the phone rang again. He turned back, picked it up. “Hello?”

With a sharp click, the line went dead.

Lash turned away again, yawning, forcing himself to think about dinner. He walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, in hope some meal might put itself together. Nothing did. And with his brain shutting down, Lash opted for the easiest solution: he’d phone the Chinese place on the Post Road.

As he reached for the phone, it rang again.

He picked it up. “Hello?”

This time, there was a listening silence on the line.

“Hello?”

Another click as the line went dead.

Lash slowly replaced the phone, then stared at it, thinking. He’d been so wrapped up in the events at Eden he hadn’t noticed all the little annoyances that were once again creeping back into his life. Or perhaps he had noticed them, but simply hadn’t wanted to address them. His newspaper, missing three days out of four. The mail, missing from his mailbox. The repeated hang-ups, eight today alone.

He knew exactly what this meant, and he knew what had to be done to stop it.

The prospect filled him with gloom.

The drive to East Norwalk took less than ten minutes. Lash had made it only once before, but he knew Norwalk well, and the landmarks were familiar. The area he found himself in was what civic leaders euphemistically called a neighborhood in transition: close by the new Maritime Center, but also near enough to the poorest sections to require bars on the doors and windows.

Lash pulled over to the curb and double-checked the address: 9148 Jefferson. The house looked like all those that surrounded it: Craftsman-style; small, just two rooms over two; stucco front with a detached garage in the rear. This particular lawn might be less tended than those around it, but all the houses shared a certain shabbiness under the pitiless glare of the streetlight.

He stared at the house. This could be handled in one of two ways: with compassion, or with firmness. Mary English had not responded well to compassion. He’d been compassionate with her last year, during the marital therapy sessions with her husband. Mary had seized upon that compassion, fixated upon him. She had developed an infatuation, an obsession, that ironically led to her divorce: the very thing Lash had been trying to forestall. It had also led to a protracted stalking — telephone hang-ups, mail missing or thumbed through, tearful late-night ambushes outside his office — that had taken a restraining order to stop.

Lash sat a moment longer, preparing himself. Then he opened the door, came around the car, and walked toward the house.

The sound of the doorbell echoed hollowly through the rooms beyond. As the chimes died away, silence briefly returned. Then, the tread of feet descending stairs. The outside light came on, and the eyehole cover was scraped away. A moment later, the thud of the deadbolt; the barred door pulled back; and there was Mary English, blinking out into the glow of the streetlight.

She was still wearing her work clothes, but she had clearly been interrupted in washing up: her lipstick was gone, but the mascara remained. Although it had been only a year since the last therapy session with her husband, she now looked far older than her forty years — there were hollows beneath her eyes the makeup couldn’t hide, and a tracery of fine lines ran away from the corners of her mouth. Her eyes went wide with recognition, and in them Lash read a complex mix of emotions: surprise, pleasure, hope, fear.

“Dr. Lash!” she said a little breathlessly. “I–I can’t believe you’re here. What is it?”

Lash took a deep breath. “I think you know what it is, Mary.”

“No, I don’t know. What’s happened? Do you want to come in? Have a cup of coffee?” And she held the door open for him.

Lash remained in the doorway, trying to keep his voice cool, his face expressionless. “Mary, please. This will only make it worse.”

She looked at him, uncomprehending.

For a moment, Lash hesitated. Then he remembered how it had been the first time he’d confronted her, on this same stoop, and he forced himself on.

“Denial won’t help, Mary. You’ve been harassing me again — phoning my house, tampering with my mail. I want you to stop it, please, and stop it now.”

Mary did not speak. But as she looked at him, she seemed to age even more. Her eyes slowly fell away from his, and her shoulders slumped.

“I can’t deal with this again, Mary. Not right now. So I want you to agree to stop this before it escalates again. I want you to say you’ll stop this, say it to my face. Please, don’t force my hand.”

At this, she looked up again, her eyes glittering with sudden anger.

“Is this some kind of cruel joke?” she spat at him. “Look at me. Look at my house. There’s barely a stick of furniture in it. I’ve lost custody of my child. It’s a struggle just to see him alternate weekends. Oh, God…”

As quickly as it had come, the anger receded. Tears traced muddy lines of mascara. “I’ve complied with the judge. I’ve done everything you asked.”

“Then why is my mail missing again, Mary? Why all the hang-up calls?”

“You think that’s me? Do you think I could bring myself to do that, after all that’s happened… after what your judge did to my life, to my—” Further words were choked off by a sob.

Lash hesitated, not quite sure what to say. The anger, the sadness, seemed genuine. But then again, borderlines like Mary English did feel anger, misery, depression. It was just misdirected. And they were very good at dissembling, at twisting things back on you, making you, not them, the guilty party…

“How could you come here like this, hurt me this way?” she sobbed. “You’re a psychologist, you’re supposed to help people…”

Lash stood in the doorway, silent and increasingly uncertain, waiting for the emotions to play themselves out.

The sobs ceased. And a moment later, her shoulders straightened.

“How could I possibly have ever been attracted to you?” she asked in a quiet voice. “Back then, you struck me as a man who cared, who had it all together. A man with a little sense of mystery.” She brusquely wiped away a tear. “But you know what I decided, lying here awake at night, alone, in my empty house? Your mystery is the mystery of a man who’s got nothing inside. A man who’s got nothing of himself to give.”

She reached behind her, fumbled with a box of tissues on the hall table, cursed when she found it empty. “Get out of here,” she said quietly, without meeting his gaze. “Get out of here, please. Leave me be.”

Lash stared at her. By old habit, half a dozen clinical replies came to mind. But sorting through them, none seemed appropriate. So he simply nodded and turned away.

He started the car, did a U-turn, retraced his route down the street. But before he got to the corner, he pulled over to the curb and stopped. In the rearview mirror, he could see that the front light of 9148 Jefferson had already been extinguished.

What had Richard Silver said, in that vast room floating sixty stories above Manhattan? It’s reassuring, knowing you’re assisting us. Here, staring out into the dark, Lash felt no such reassurance.