The Chosen One

37

Aberdeen, Washington, Friday March 24, 18.23 PST

Maggie concluded the meeting with a few of the bureaucratic questions – accompanied by much earnest note-taking – that she thought Ashley Muir, life insurance agent, might ask.

‘What about his parents? Are they alive or deceased?’

‘Both dead,’ Principal Schilling answered. ‘Robert’s father died even before he came to the school. Perhaps that’s another thing I should have noticed: the absence of a father figure. I would approach a boy like him very differently now.’

‘And what about Robert’s mother?’

‘She died long ago. More than twenty years, I think.’

‘Besides the debating, was there anything else that might have made Jackson stand out as a student?’

‘He was bright. You’ve got to remember that: before Stephen Baker appeared, Jackson was in the top bracket of the school. Not a star, but accomplished. He was interested in world affairs, in politics. He was a good linguist; almost fluent in Spanish.’

Maggie was scribbling in her notebook.

‘I guess,’ the Principal offered, ‘that Robert was what today’s students would call a “geek”.’

‘A geek?’ Maggie smiled.

‘It’s funny, how much you remember when you put your mind to it. He was fascinated by computers. No one had computers in their homes back then, of course, but Robert was very knowledgeable. I seem to remember he started a school computer club. Though that petered out after, you know, the change in the debate team.’

Maggie wrote it all down, along with the social security number and now-defunct home address Mr Schilling gave her.

‘You’ve been very generous with your time.’

‘I hope it’s helped. And Ms Muir? If you find out what happened to Robert Jackson, be sure to let me know.’

By the time Maggie had pushed through the swing doors and stepped outside, twilight was setting in. She looked at her watch: six forty local time, twenty to ten on the East Coast. The day had begun with a five-hour flight, a two-hour drive: the thought of driving back to Seattle now – her original plan – suddenly lost its appeal. She was exhausted. Safer to find a motel in Aberdeen and make tracks in the morning.

She was walking towards her hire car when she froze.

There, standing in the gloom right beside her car was the outline of a person: man or woman Maggie couldn’t tell. The figure was standing, quite still, facing towards her, as if waiting for this moment. Was this how it had happened to Stuart: a man in the shadows, standing quite calmly, waiting for the moment to strike? Maggie felt her fist clench, an involuntary and useless gesture – one that made her realize she was unarmed and therefore utterly powerless.

Then a voice, carrying over the empty asphalt of the parking lot: ‘Am I glad to see you!’

A woman. As Maggie stepped nearer, she could see that she was older, early sixties at a guess. She felt her shoulders drop in relief. Either a veteran teacher or a grandmother of one of the pupils, Maggie guessed. Grey-haired, bespectacled and in a terminally unfashionable coat. A less frightening person it was hard to imagine.

‘Gosh, I am so relieved, I can’t tell you. My battery’s dead – again! – and I desperately need someone to give me some help.’

Something in the woman’s voice gave Maggie an instant ache, taking her back to evenings just like this one: after school, dark and cold, being met by her mother. It didn’t happen often: she and Liz usually walked or got the bus. But on those rare afternoons when it did, when she would see her mother’s smiling face there by the gate, it would fill her with warmth. And with something else, too – a sensation she now longed for so deeply it caught her by surprise. There was no immediate word for it, but it belonged somewhere between safety and love. She had, she realized, moved so far away from that house she grew up in.

‘Of course I’ll help. Mind you, I’m not sure I have any jump leads. This is a rental.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that, dear. My son gave me everything. I have it all in the trunk. All I need is another car that works!’

Maggie watched, impressed, as the woman went around the back of her silver Saturn, opened the boot and emerged carrying two cables, red and black. She then lifted the hood on her own car, talking throughout.

‘If I’ve made that mistake once, I’ve made it a thousand times. The same thing, again and again. I park the car, I collect my handbag and then-’

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Maggie, hovering close by, watching with admiration as the older woman placed the crocodile clips on the plus and minus nodes of her car battery. ‘You left the lights on.’

‘Oh no, dear,’ the lady said, looking slightly affronted. ‘I learned that lesson a long time ago. No, this was a different mistake. I left my key in the ignition.’

‘And that gives you a flat battery?’

‘It does, yes. It runs the radio or something, I don’t know. My son is the mechanic in the family. He knows about these things.’ She suddenly turned away from the engine, looking mildly alarmed. ‘You won’t tell him, will you? About this?’

Maggie smiled, remembering the way her mother had acted when she had started learning to use a computer for the first time. She had forgotten one of her key lessons – closing down all the programs before switching the machine off – and had turned to Maggie with the same expression. ‘You won’t tell Liz, will you?’

‘No, I won’t tell him. I don’t know who he is. I’m from out of town.’

‘Are you really, dear? You’re not a parent at this school, then?’

‘Just visiting.’

‘What a shame. You could have met my Mike. He’s a parent at this school.’ She paused. ‘Single parent now.’ She paused, as if absorbing that fact. ‘Now, let’s get your car moved alongside mine and then get that hood open.’

Maggie clicked the car door open, sat in the driver’s seat, fired it up, then drove it in a near circle, so that it ended up facing the Saturn, nose-to-nose. Then she turned the engine off and began looking for the latch for the hood. Feeling in the dark under the steering wheel column eventually revealed a small lever. She pulled it, heard the click and then watched, impressed again, as the woman didn’t wait for help but hoisted the hood up to full height by herself.

‘OK, don’t turn the engine back on just yet! Wait for me to give you the word.’

As Maggie waited, she thought again of what she had heard from Mr Schilling. ‘An obsession like this only ends in destruction,’ he had said. Even three decades ago, when Robert Jackson was a teenager, Schilling had become convinced that something dangerous and fateful was brewing in him. Jackson will either destroy Stephen Baker – or he will destroy himself.

She pictured them here, in this car park, outside this school, on evenings like this one – Baker smiling to the girls as he slung his rucksack over his shoulder and headed home, tall and lean, his strides long and effortless. And, perhaps just over there by the side entrance, watching, would have stood the shorter, plainer Robert Jackson, denied even one of Baker’s conspicuous gifts. Maggie could see him in the dusk, the teenage rage simmering inside him.

‘OK! Let’s give this a go!’

Coming back to herself, Maggie turned the key, lightly pumped the gas pedal and heard the car spark into action. Without moving, she watched the grey-haired lady in her tweedy coat move to her own car and slip into the driver’s seat. A second or two later came the sound of her engine revving back to life.

A moment later both were out of their cars, standing in front of the humming engines now connected, like two hospital patients, by red and black cables.

‘We did it,’ Maggie said, a wide smile on her face.

‘Not bad for a couple of broads, eh?’ said the woman, squeezing Maggie’s arm for good measure.

‘Not bad at all.’

‘I’m so grateful to you. Now I can pick up my grandson from football practice.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Oh, mercy me. I should have been there ten minutes ago. I’m going to have to rush off. Is there any way I can thank you?’

Maggie realized the answer was no. She could give no real name or address even though, just this once, she would have quite liked to. All she could do was extend a hand and, with a twinge of regret, say: ‘I’m glad I could help. Now go pick up your grandson. And remember to keep the engine running!’

She watched the Saturn turn smoothly out of the lot and head into the night. Something about the sight of it made up Maggie’s mind: she would not make the long drive to Seattle. She would find a cheap and cheerful place to stay here in Aberdeen, shower, fall into bed and sleep. She was, she realized, completely drained.

She headed to the highway that had brought her here, looking for signs for the centre of town. She glided through a succession of green lights and was on her way. Traffic was thin, just a few lights brightening the dark. She wondered if this was going to be one of those American places that had no real centre – just a sprawl. Maybe she should just keep driving, waiting for the first motel that popped up.

There were some up ahead and on the left. In readiness for the exit, she eased down on the brake, but her speed didn’t alter. She pressed down harder and this time the car jerked when it should have slowed down. Bloody rentals.

When the exit came into view, she moved into the right lane, gently squeezing the brake.

The car did not slow down.

Instead it was continuing at full speed. Maggie pressed down again. Still nothing. The car kept rushing forward, utterly beyond her control. She slammed her foot on the brake. Nothing!

By now the exit lane was curving off the main highway. She looked in her wing mirror: a car in the next lane. There was no way she could pull away without crashing into it. She would have to take the exit.

The road curved round suddenly. She gripped the steering wheel as tightly as she could, swerving around a road meant to be taken at half this speed. She could feel the bumps under her wheels as she careened into the side strips. The reflector signs, each marked with an arrow, were coming too fast.

Finally the road straightened out but still she was going too fast. She could see that up ahead was a red light at a crossroads, bright and noisy with traffic. Already there were two other cars waiting at the light – and she was heading at full, motorway speed towards them. She stamped impotently once more on the pedal, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. In a matter of seconds, she would either slam into the stationary cars or be smashed from the side by oncoming traffic.

She knew she had only one option but the fear of it almost paralysed her. It was only the onrushing proximity of the car in front, its red brake lights looming and, finally, the sight of two heads low down on the back seat – children – that finally prompted action.

Gritting her teeth, she swerved off the road and into the indistinct blackness beyond. As she turned the wheel, she had no idea what lay there. Hedges, trees or a grass verge? A ditch? Or a sheer drop? She had no way of knowing and now no choice but to drive into it at close to seventy miles per hour.

The headlights picked it out perhaps a split second before she felt the hard crunch of metal: a steel barrier that crumpled under the force of the car. Now a thicket of trees and a tangle of branches came at her, the car bumping and thudding at what felt a thunderous speed. Her head hit the roof of the car, ramming through the thin vinyl veneer into the hard metal underneath.

Instinct took over as she reached for the clasp holding her safety belt and, with one hand still on the wheel, unpopped it. Then, seeing what loomed ahead, she opened the car door and hurled herself out, even as she could see the ground passing rapidly beneath her.

Perhaps a half-second before she hit the ground, while she was still in the air, her heart throbbing with a nauseous urgency, she saw two things, one clearer than the other.

Less clear was the thick tree that her car had just rammed into, crumpling the entire front end. Clearer, and in her mind’s eye, was the face of the woman who had persuaded her to open the hood of her car, a woman whose eyes had been kindly enough to remind Maggie Costello of her own mother.

And after that she saw nothing.