You're Next

Chapter 38

The Batphone, charging on the nightstand, rattled Mike awake, harmonizing with the throbbing in his head. His eyelids felt gummy, his mouth filled with sand. He pried his eyes open, uncoiled himself from Kat’s side. Slowly, his surroundings trickled into his brain. A motel. Somewhere in Glendale.

He answered, his voice hangover-rough.

Shep said, ‘Dodge tried to get to Annabel.’

Mike felt a sudden temperature drop, an arctic wind blowing through the shoddy room. ‘And?’

‘He didn’t get to her.’

‘He was going to…’

‘Maybe. He dropped an electrical wire. Maybe he was gonna plant a bug so they could ambush you if you visited. Either way they’re watching her.’

Mike sat up sharply, Kat sliding off his arm, deadweight. Snowball II peeked out from under her shoulder, its bulging eyes a portrait of alarm. ‘Is she okay?’

‘Yes. I mean, for being unconscious.’

‘So they want to use her to catch me when I surface?’ Mike asked. ‘You think that means they won’t kill her?’

Shep said, ‘They could always hope you surface at her funeral.’

The line hummed for a bit.

‘There’s a hearing on your health-care thing this morning,’ Shep said. ‘We’ve gotta get her moved before then, while you still have authority. You need to send a fax to Dr Cha demanding that Annabel be moved. Get a pen. Write down this phrasing.’

Mike stumbled around, tripping over his shoes, found a pencil and a torn grocery bag to write on, and took dictation. ‘Okay, but how am I going to find a place to transfer-’

‘I’ll handle it. Just get me the fax. Now.’

Mike did his best to rouse Kat, but she was out cold. He shook her gently, tugged at her arms, even lifted her eyelids with his thumbs. Finally, juggling their bags, the rucksack, and a page torn from the phone book, he carried her out to the Honda and laid her in the backseat. A few blocks from FedEx Kinko’s, she woke irritably.

‘What day is it?’

Early-morning gray. Few cars on the road. People smoking at bus stops. Drivers slurping from Starbucks cups.

‘Friday,’ Mike said. ‘I think it’s Friday.’

‘Where are we?’

‘I have to send a fax.’

‘Then where are we going?’

Mike blinked hard, fighting off an image of his own father behind a different steering wheel, giving indistinct answers and nervous glances at the rearview. A fresh hostility spiked in his chest. In three decades he’d traveled only the distance from the backseat to the front.

Kat was asking something else. ‘When do we get to go home?’

‘I don’t know.’ His voice was half strangled, defeated.

She slumped against the window and blew out a sigh of despair. It struck him with renewed urgency that they couldn’t keep up the nomadic routine for much longer. That they’d run out of time. Out of patience. Out of luck.

At Kinko’s he prepared the fax on a rented computer. Kat spun in the chair next to him, her head tilted back so she could watch the ceiling spin. Before printing he let the cursor linger over the Explorer button. Hesitating, he looked at Kat, twirling, mumbling. Something in his chest cracked open, and he glanced away quickly so she wouldn’t see his eyes watering.

Through the American Airlines Web site, he booked a oneway ticket for Kat to St. Louis, departing at 5:30 P.M. Annabel’s brother, whom Mike had always liked best of her family, had just gotten married and bought a house in the suburbs. A companion-ticket option popped up, and it took all he could muster to click No. He used Annabel’s PayPal account to complete the purchase. Then he bought another ticket on the same route for Kat on the 11:45 red-eye and printed both boarding passes.

He gave the fax to the lady at the desk – “I, Michael Wingate, do hereby request that my wife, Annabel Wingate, be released for transfer to a specialist management team which I have selected based on their ability to provide a higher level of care” – and split.

Nosing the Honda onto the nearest freeway entrance, he put the pedal down, hard, wanting as much distance between him and the Kinko’s phone, the number of which would be tattooed across the transfer request when they pulled it warm from the fax machine at the Los Robles Medical Center.

‘Mom takes me to get ice cream every Friday after school,’ Kat said.

Mike sliced between two semis, hit the fast lane on a slide. Around the bend they were greeted by a wall of brake lights. The front edge of rush hour. Mike jerked onto the shoulder, gauging the distance to the next exit.

‘It’s Friday,’ she said. ‘I know Mom’s not… she can’t… but maybe you and I could-’

‘Not right now.’ He struggled to hide his apprehension. His tone gave off more irritation than he would have liked.

‘Why not?’

‘Because.’ He glanced over at her. ‘Oh, come on. What?’

‘You yelled at me.’

‘I didn’t yell at you.’

Vehicles clogged the exit. Two, three streetlight changes should be enough to shove them through onto residential streets. Then he could weave for a while, find another motel, hole up until… until what?

He risked another glance over. Kat’s face was flushed, the skin puffy around the bridge of her nose, as it got before she cried. What could he do? Half the time she was more mature than he was, but right now she was eight and missed her mother and wanted ice cream.

Fifteen minutes and twenty constipated blocks later, he found a Rite Aid. Kat sat on a Lilliputian chair by the ice-cream counter. She ate her Rocky Road looking down into the cone.

He was not forgiven.

Watching her nibble around the scoop, savoring each bite with almost mournful focus, he realized that the scene felt like a last meal.

Back in the car, amped on sugar, Kat’s anger boiled away. She strained at the seat belt, singing, ‘Miiiss Suzy was a ki-iid, a ki-iid, a ki-iid. Miss Suzy was a ki-iid, and this is what she said-’

Mike drove, fumbling at the wheel, cell phone at his face. ‘The doc get the fax?’

Shep said, ‘Just.’

‘Waah waah, suck my thumb, gimme a piece o’ bubble gum-’

‘What now?’

‘Don’t know,’ Shep said. ‘But wherever Annabel goes, we can’t keep tabs on her anymore. We have to sever all contact. It’s the only way to keep her safe.’

‘What if she-’

‘You have to let her go.’

‘-was a tee-nager, a tee-nager, a tee-nager, Miss Suzy was a teenager, and this is what-’

‘I can’t. She’s my wife. I need to know how she’s doing.’

‘Even if that kills her?’

Mike fought his face back into place. Took a few breaths. ‘Anything on Kiki Dupleshney?’ he asked.

‘I just put out the word twelve hours ago.’

‘-piece o’ bubble gum, go to your room, oooo aah, lost my bra-’

‘I know, Shep, but-’ Mike looked over at Kat, finishing the thought in his head: But I don’t know how much longer my daughter can hold up.

Snowball II got into the song and dance now, swinging along, Kat kicking up the stuffed-animal legs, a Vegas revue gone polar. She was punch drunk, coming apart at the seams. She needed to run in circles until she fell down.

Shep said, ‘Cat-and-mouse games take a lotta waiting, Mike. You know that.’

Traffic had loosened; Mike had a full tank of gas and nowhere to go.

Miss Suzy’s life cycle had drawn to a close: ‘-to heh-ven, to heh-ven, Miss Suzy went to heh-ven, and this is what she said.’

He set the phone in his lap and watched the streetlights whip by overhead. All those people on the sidewalks, shopping and pushing strollers, going about their normal lives.

Seven hours until that first flight departed for St. Louis.

‘-oooo aah, lost my bra, help me, choke choke choke, tra-laaaaaa!’

A nanosecond of silence.

Mike exhaled with relief.

‘Miiiiiiiiiiiss Suzy was a bay-bee, a bay-bee, a bay-bee-’

They passed a public park with grassy hills and picnic tables and jungle gyms. Severing the third verse, Mike pulled off, and they used the bathrooms. He waited nervously outside the women’s room until Kat reappeared. They sat at one of the picnic tables, Mike wearing the rucksack and digging through the grocery bags to come up with food. He found himself checking the parking lot, the trees along the perimeter, the guy in shades walking his dog. Kat picked at her food. He couldn’t blame her; they’d had peanut butter for five straight meals, and the bread was stale.

‘That sandwich isn’t gonna eat itself,’ he said.

‘But if it did,’ Kat replied, ‘that would be really cool.’

‘Want me to get you a hot lunch somewhere?’

‘No. Really. This is fine.’ Kat took a bite, made a big show of chomping to emphasize the hardship. He soaked in the smart-ass sight of her.

Clouds moved overhead, dimming the park a few watts. Mike thought about a one-way no-companion ticket to St. Louis. 5:30 P.M. Her boarding passes crinkled in his back pocket. He fussed with his fingers. Cleared his throat. ‘Your mother and I, when we got married… Man, did we want a baby. We wanted you more than anything. Do you know that?’

Kat nodded impatiently, her eyes on the fenced jungle gym below. ‘Can I play?’

He fought his voice steady. ‘Of course, honey,’ he managed.

She bolted down the slope, leaving her sandwich behind. He cleaned up and followed, watching from outside the fence. He indulged in a brief fantasy: her on a tire swing in an expansive St. Louis backyard, Annabel’s brother waiting on the porch with his new bride and some lemonade.

He thought of that playground from his childhood, of the wail of that distant bell and how he’d emerged from the yellow tunnel to see the empty parking spaces along the curb. Can you tell me who you belong to?

His heart was racing. Needing to be closer, he circled the fence and pushed Kat on the swings. For a time there was nothing but the sand under his feet, a pleasant breeze, and his daughter rotating away and back, away and back. Her curly hair, flying up in his face, was badly tangled and smelled like fruit punch. The scene, this scene, never changed. She could have been two or five. He could have been twenty-nine or thirty-three.

He pushed her, his hands light against her back, letting her go, catching her, letting her go again.