The remains

Chapter 44

The reality of the situation didn’t immediately register.

It just looked like Michael was lying on the bed as if he was simply taking a quick lie-down before we hit the road for the 140 mile drive south to New York. But a fraction of a second later the fog lifted and the real scene came to light. It was only then that I could see how his shirt was ripped off, how his mouth was gagged with duct tape, how his hands had been hastily duct taped together at the wrists, his legs bound together at the ankles.

He was unconscious, eyes wide shut, body lying fetal on the bed.

I stood there paralyzed. Stood there staring at Michael, one side of his face was pressed into the pillow. The exposed half was lit from the light that leaked in through the open window.

The bedroom was as still as an empty church. My copy of Mockingbird had been tossed onto the floor by the bed. I stood petrified, my feet planted in concrete. I gazed up and down at Michael’s naked chest with a kind of frightened curiosity. There was a small cut that had been made just below his right nipple. A thin line of blood trickled from it, ran down along his ribcage. The dark hair on his head was mussed up. A thin streak of blood ran down the center of his forehead. I knew then he’d been hit over the head with a blunt object.

I knew I could not be alone; that there was someone else inside the apartment besides Michael and me. The ashtray smell. It was a familiar smell. I knew that smell as well as I knew myself.

I had no idea how long I’d been standing inside that open door, just staring at the bound image of my ex-husband. A half-second maybe. Or a full minute. Fear warped time, bent it the same way it crippled my insides.

For me, the present moment no longer contained any logic or proportion. I knew I had to do something. What I wanted to do was lift my feet, put one foot in front of the other. I wanted to unbind Michael, rescue him.

But I just stood there doing nothing.

My hesitation must have been exactly what Whalen was counting on when he opened my closet door and stepped out into the bedroom.