Phantom Prey

15

Alyssa Austin felt not confused, but broken-as though a wire had come loose somewhere in the circuitry of her brain, that her mind was full of static. Felt as though the picture tube was about to blow up, or that a thunderstorm was overhead, ruining reception.

Once in the car, she could feel Loren, there behind her, as surely as if she’d had a pumpkin in the backseat: and at the same time-at exactly the same time-she knew that Loren didn’t exist, that Loren was a flaw in the wetware. The woman, the nightmare, the horror that Davenport called the Fairy-she was the Fairy.

And the Fairy struggled to come back, did come back, fading in and out, as though Alyssa were getting alternating shots of Xanax and cocaine.

She sliced across St. Paul on I- 94, headed south across the Lafayette Bridge and down Highway 52, then cut east to the South St. Paul municipal airport; all on remote control, as though she were getting directions from a comic book, frame by frame.

Hunter Austin had a condo- hangar, not yet sold. She used her card key to get through the gate, wound through the clutter of dark hangars, picked up the garage- door opener off the front seat, punched up the hangar door, and when it had opened, pulled the car inside.

Her Benz was crouched there, waiting, and she shifted to the bigger car, hurrying, forgot to get the garage- door opener, and after she’d backed out, had to jump out of the car and go back and get it. Hope nobody sees me, hope… The hangar area was dark as a coal sack, cold. Not another living thing, only Alyssa, scurrying in and out of her car’s headlights, at Hunter Austin’s hangar.

From there, it was ten minutes home. Loren’s face blinked in the mirrors and the windows and the glass panels around the house, but she ignored him: programming errors, nothing more. Once she thought she heard him cry out to her; thought she felt him plucking at her jacket. She ignored the cry, the touch, hurried up the stairs to her bedroom, to the bathroom, to soak her face in cold water, to take a shower…

Flicked on the light, and stopped, staring, agog. She was covered with blood. Her face, her chest… she touched her blouse, found it sticky, soaked with still- wet blood. “Oh, God…”

She peeled off the clothes, ripping them away from herself, staggered into the shower, turned it on, scrubbed at herself, the stains resisting the body wash, giving way to a loofah. When she got out of the shower, shivering, not with cold, but with fear, and regret, and astonishment… she raised a washcloth to her face and saw the black new moons of blood under her fingernails.

She would have pulled the nails with pliers, if she’d had some pliers; frantic, she dug through her travel kit and came up with some blade ended tweezers and used a blade to scrape deep under the nails. “Get it out,” she moaned, digging. “Get it out.”

Finally clean, she picked up her clothes, and saw blood on the floor. Her clothes were soaked in it. She wrapped them in a towel, used another towel to clean up the blood on the floor, carried the bundle down to the laundry, shoved them into the washer, poured in a cup, then another, of Tide.

Put the bottle down, saw the flecks of blood on her forearms, began to weep, backed away from the washer, ran back up the stairs, to the bathroom, watched her frantic, harried eyes in the mirror as she washed off this last insult. Looked in the mirror and then touched her hair, and felt the thickness, and took her fingers down and found more blood…

Weeping, back in the shower, soaking her hair, pouring on the shampoo, scrubbing until she thought her scalp would come loose; and then finally, stepping out, finding a new towel, wrapping herself in it.

My God, the car. Both cars. If anybody looked in the car in the hangar… there must be blood everywhere.

Loren flicked in the mirror, his mouth open, but she put out a hand and brushed him away, wiping the slate. Loren wasn’t real, she was. And one car was surely soaked in blood, and the other would have at least traces.

With that, something clicked behind her eyes. She looked at herself again. She was standing there, with a towel on her shoulders. She liked her body, normally, but now it all looked blue and cold and slumped, and her hair hung off her head in tangled wet strands, as though she’d just survived a shipwreck.

Okay. Manage it. Manage it. She’d killed a woman. Had she killed anyone else? She must have-why else would she have that little car? It was all in there, in her mind, but again, it was like black- and-white panels in a newspaper cartoon. She had killed three people. She had killed them under the guidance of Loren Doyle, a man who’d come from nowhere, and convinced her that Frances had been murdered, and that she was the only possible instrument of retribution.

Innocent people. Crazy. Insane. But there it was. She didn’t feel crazy now…

She stared at herself: Manage it. Had anyone seen her? Davenport was investigating the murders, but had no idea who’d done them. Frances? Oh, God, no. Had she killed Frances? She closed her eyes, held on to the bathroom counter, and flipped back through the comic- book images, the last time she’d seen Frances…

Nothing there. She opened her eyes, relieved and puzzled. She hadn’t killed Frances.

She looked at the towel in her hand, draped it through a rack, wandered to the dressing room. Pulled on clean underpants and a soft bra, a tracksuit, soft woolen socks, and running shoes. Warm and comfortable.

My God, she’d killed three people. With a knife. Where was the knife? Where was it? Still in the little car. On the floor, under the front seat. Have to get rid of the car. Clean it up, get rid of it.

She went out into the bedroom, turned off the ceiling lights, lay on the bed in the dim light coming from the bathroom, and thought through it.

She hadn’t gone to Shockley’s place as Fairy, because Shockley wouldn’t have let Fairy in the door, not with Davenport roaming around, asking people about her. And shit, she had to get rid of the Fairy stuff.

She started to roll off the bed, but then thought, Wait, wait, slow down. Think it through. Manage it.

She hadn’t gone to Shockley’s as Fairy, so if anyone had seen her, they might be able to identify her. If they had, or if they would, she was gone. She hadn’t seen anybody, but she hadn’t covered her face, and people did watch the street from windows, lonely people, curious people…But it had been dark, and she’d been moving; and nobody inside the house had seen her.

If they suspected, though-and Benson, the first BCA agent, suspected that she had something to do with Frances’s death, even though she didn’t-if they suspected, they’d go through the house. They’d eventually find the Fairy stuff, and probably blood and hair on that, DNA stuff, and she’d be done.

They’d look at her car, and if there was blood on the car, they’d find it, and they’d match it to Shockley’s, and she’d be done.

If they learned about the hangar, they’d search it and find the car, and that surely had blood in it, and she’d be done.

If they looked in Fairy’s purse, they’d find the photo that Fairy had used to track Frances’s friends, and she’d be done.

Manage it.

Loren called her: “Alyssa, please, please help me. I’m fading."

"Fuck you,” she said. “Dragging me down, Alyssa. They’re dragging me down…"

"Fuck you. Go,” Alyssa shouted, but his words were as loud as her own.

The first time she’d seen him, a month after Frances’s murder, she’d run into the night, had called the police from a neighbor’s house. The police were at her house in a minute, more coming in behind, just as they’d come in the first time, when Frances was killed. Again, they went through the house inch by inch, pistols drawn.

As they hunted for the intruder, it came to Fairy’s mind that the intruder wasn’t so much reflected in the mirror, as he was inside the mirror.

The police found no one, but didn’t doubt her. Not at first. They were back the next day, in the daylight, to interview her. The intruder, they believed, must know her-must know the house, to get out of sight and out of town so quickly. Or perhaps was a resident. The woods were thick enough that somebody dressed in black, as the intruder had been, could come and go at will, if he was careful and familiar with the terrain.

But he hadn’t looked like a neighbor. The neighbors were sometimes eccentric, but the intruder had been theatrical, in the old sense of the word, the Oscar Wilde sense, loose silk shirts and tight butt hugging pants, side- zip boots.

That, the neighbors weren’t. He came back; not all at once, but with hints, a few piano notes here, a figure at the corner of the eye. He frightened her at first, and then not so much. Late one night, he was simply there, in her dressing room mirror.

“Who the hell are you?” Fairy asked. “I’m a ghost,” he said. “A ghost."

"That’s right. Not many people can see us, though we can see you

We’re dead, and mirrors are our windows into your world."

"Why are you showing up now?"

"I’ve always been around,” he said. “Around somewhere. I drift around the city, watching people. You couldn’t see me; but now you can! I’m amazed. Nobody can see me.”

“Really…"

"Really."

"What do you want?” Fairy asked. He smiled: “Not much. A little time, a little conversation. A little piano playing, a sing- along."

"I’m crazy, aren’t I?"

"You have to be a little crazy to see me, but you’re not insane, if that’s what you mean. I’m really here."

"I’m insane,” she said, and she turned away from him. “No, no,” he said, the anxiety high in his voice. “Don’t go away

Don’t go. I can help you…” He told her about death. About rising up from his own body, then losing sight of it. He’d been in water, he thought, with other people around, but he couldn’t see them after he died. He’d been wandering in a fog forever, it seemed like, coming upon little shafts and rectangles of light, and looking through them, realized that he was looking out of mirrors. All over St. Paul, all over the whole area… He’d been inches from living people, but they’d never seen him.

And then he’d seen Alyssa, first drawn by her body. Then one day, he’d played a few notes on the piano that was in the mirror with him, a reflection of the piano in Alyssa’s music room.

And he’d seen her react. “I can’t tell you how excited I was. You heard me.”

He knew about Frances. Knew she was dead. Could feel her there, on the dead side of things.

“She’s gone for good, isn’t she?” she asked. “Not yet from this plane,” he said. “She’s restless, she wants to move on-but can’t, not yet. She can’t find peace."

"Could you find her for me?"

"No. I can’t see anybody else here. It’s like night, like a foggy night…"

"Maybe she’ll come to me,” Alyssa said. “Finding the way is… hard,” Loren said. “From here, you can’t see anything but lights from the mirrors, and other shiny things, little threads of light here and there, and rectangles and circles of it, the mirrors. I found your mirror, at random. The mirrors look like campfires around a lake. When I go back, during the day, I sit there, waiting for night to come, so I can see the mirror again. And the light. I’m afraid sometimes that night will come and your mirror will be gone and I’ll be wandering, crazy, looking for it, seeing all those people on the other side, eating and fucking and playing music, and all I get are shadows…” He was running on, and he shuddered.

He said, “Frances can’t leave here until she has justice. She can’t go on.”

“Go on to what?"

"To heaven. To rebirth. To whatever it is-I don’t know myself."

"Why haven’t you gone?"

"I don’t know. I just can’t… I can’t…”

“Let me help you find justice,” he said. She was skeptical: “How will you do that, mirror- man?"

"We can work this through. We can explore it. We can get… documents. Talk to people."

"People will talk to a ghost?"

"No, but I can advise you. I can come with you when you hunt them… you can pull me through."

"Pull you through,” she said. She stepped back, out of reach. “Pull me through,” he said. He couldn’t hide the eagerness in his voice. “Take my fingers, pull me through. I can’t stay, I fade when the sun comes around, but for a few hours I can be with you."

"You’ll hurt me,” Fairy said. “No, no.” His eyes widened, and his hands spread, palms up, in supplication. “I could never hurt you. You’re the only person who can see me- you’re the only person I can talk to. Without you, I’m alone.”

“You have a cruel lip; I can see the cruelty in it."

"No, no…”

The relationship took time. She walked away from him the first night, heard him crying as she left the room; and when she came back, he wasn’t there, nor was he there the next night. The third night, he was back again and she walked away. She walked away for three, four nights.

“You almost ruined it,” he said, almost choking on the words, the words tumbling in his rush to get them out. “You didn’t believe in yourself, you thought I was imaginary. I’m not imaginary, I’m right here. I’m human.”

On the fifth night, she pulled him through. The night after that, he touched her; and the night after that, they made love, though that wasn’t exactly what it was.

Loren was cold as ice. He didn’t really want sex; he wanted heat. And as they lay side by side, talking of Frances and justice, he told her about the other side, the underworld, the dark and dim place where he spent his days. “I know-I just know, I can’t tell you how- that other people move on. I haven’t. Maybe I was made to stay here to help you find Frances. I don’t know.”

“You don’t even see them when they go? When their spirits move over?”

“No. They’re here, I think, but we can’t see each other-the dead

Sometimes, though, I’d wake up and find myself outside, along the Mississippi in St. Paul. Nobody else on the streets. Dark, foggy, wet. Streetlights-I could never see the lights, but there’d be these cones of light coming down to me. Then I’d come to a bluff, and I’d see a riverboat down there. Casting off, pulling away. As though I were just too late to make it… Going somewhere.”

“You’ve never run down to catch it?"

"I can’t get there,” he said. “It’s like one of those dreams where you can’t find a classroom, or you can’t find a locker, and every time you think you’re getting close, you take a wrong turn. The boat would be down there, and I could see the street going down the hill, but I’d always take the wrong turn and wind up somewhere else.”

And after the sex they’d gone hunting.

Now that was done. She was a killer and Loren Doyle, the fault in the wetware, the bad cells, still called to her from the mirrors.

Had to manage this. Had to manage it, right through whatever shreds of insanity were left, whatever came back to haunt her, she had to manage it.

She lay there for a few more moments, thinking about it, then launched herself from the bed. First thing: rubber gloves and garbage bags. She walked down to the kitchen, her mind clear now, not a flicker of Loren. Opened the utility closet and looked at the supplies: it’d been a while since she’d done this. She was pleased to see that Helen kept the place stocked. She took a fresh pair of rubber household gloves and a tie- top garbage sack.

Climbing the stairs again, she turned away from the master bedroom, walked past Hunter’s bedroom, past the last guest room, to the door there; opened it and climbed the stairs to the attic.

A plastic storage box from Target, under a pile of old jigsaw puzzles. She pushed the puzzles off to the side, opened the box, took out the Fairy costume and the wig, stuffed them in the garbage bag.

Carried the bag down to the laundry, left it there, got a flashlight, and went out to the car, opened the passenger door, and after a moment of minute examination of the seat and armrests, experienced the warm and holy glow known to people who have had a stroke of the purest luck.

She could not find the smallest spot of blood. When she’d looked at herself in the mirror, when she turned on the bathroom light, she’d seen blood on her face and hands, and she’d had blood on her blouse and slacks, but only on the front; some of that, undoubtedly, would have rubbed off in the small car. But by the time she’d gotten to the Benz, the blood on her hands had apparently dried, and her back and the back of her legs had been cleaned: so there was no blood on the leather steering wheel, or the seats.

She sat back on her heels, and a smile crept across her face. All right.

And Loren whispered to her, You see, the Powers wanted it this way. The Powers are on your side, Alyssa. Alyssa, listen to me…

“Fuck you,” she said aloud. “You’re just a couple of bad brain cells. That’s all done now.”

A burden off her back, she returned to the house, to silence, and frowned: Should it be this quiet? Ah: the washer.

She went back to the laundry, took the clothes, wet, out of the washer and put them in the dryer, moved into the kitchen and opened the cupboard. She picked a green spider- leg tea from Japan, added just a finger twist of ground rose hip, and brewed a cup; this particular combination was good for centering yourself when you were under stress.

She had to get rid of Fairy’s clothes, and, come to think of it, she might as well get rid of the stuff in the dryer. Wouldn’t wear them again anyway.

She sat with her tea and thought about it: she could put them in the fireplace, put on a little lighter fluid. But what if the police checked and found residue? The wig was real hair, what if a neighbor smelled burned hair?

The tea calmed her down, redirected her mental energy through a calm space, and when she finished the tea, she had determined the best possible way to dispose of the clothing.

She did the Fairy clothes and the wig, first, then got the clothes from the dryer, before the end of the cycle, still damp.

She was still working when the phone rang. She looked at the caller ID, Davenport. She knew what he’d say: that there had been a new killing. She licked her lips, drew a breath, picked up the phone: “Oh, no, no, no. Oh, no. Lucas…”

He would see her tomorrow, he said. She’d pulled it off.

An hour later, she was at her spa in Highland Park-not far from Davenport’s house. He’d be in bed, probably. She’d have to think about Davenport, already regretted inviting him in on the case. He was too smart- he’d have to be dealt with.

How to do that? She’d think about it overnight. The spa was dark, silent. She went back to the women’s locker room, into one of the bathroom stalls, and carefully and slowly fed the shredded wig and the Fairy costume and her clothes from the evening, all carefully scissored into one- inch squares, down the toilet.

There. Let the police find that. She gave it a couple of extra flushes to make sure nothing had gotten blocked, and walked out to her car. She wasn’t sleepy yet. She remembered the crime- scene crew working in the kitchen after Frances disappeared…

Maybe she could go on the Internet and find out if there was anything about destroyed DNA. If there was a cleaning product, she’d take the time to clean out the Benz, even though there was no visible blood. Then, maybe, trade it. She’d been told that a lot of low- mileage traded Mercedeses wound up in Mexico. If that were true, they’d never locate it…

Outside, she paused in the parking lot, her hand on the car door. Not a bad night, she thought. The air was cold, but you could smell the spring just around the corner.

Tomorrow, she’d figure out the small car. And Davenport. And maybe Fairy.