“We may, in fact, actually be able to cease the human aging process.”
[102]
Michael took a sip of coffee and watched the movement on the other side of the frosted glass window that separated the lieutenant’s office from the rest of the second floor. It was well past one o’clock in the morning. He had been here better than three hours, after Lieutenant Sterns had dropped by his motel room and asked him to come down to the station for questioning.
Michael placed the coffee cup back on the corner of the lieutenant’s desk.
The office door opened and Sterns came in with a typed transcript of their interview. He pulled a stapler out of a desk drawer, stapled the pages together, then handed the transcript to Michael and sat down.
“Okay,” he said, exhausted and rightfully so, Michael imagined. Not only was the hour late, but when they had first arrived at the station, the temperature in the office had been hovering near the mid-eighties. The lieutenant had turned on the fan, which sat on the filing cabinet in the corner and was still swinging from side-to-side trying to create some semblance of relief. “Read it over and sign your name at the bottom of the last page and we’ll call it a night. Fair enough?”
Peggy’s death had not yet been ruled an accident or a murder, though the lieutenant had implied that until the coroner’s report came out he would most likely be treating it as an accidental overdose. Michael had wanted to tell him everything… all about Teri’s first call, about talking to a boy whom he had come to believe was Gabe, about arriving unexpectedly in town, about the people watching Teri’s house and the people who had been watching him the past day or two. He wanted to tell it all, but realized how bizarre it would sound and managed to keep most of it to himself. Peggy was just an old friend, he had said. Someone he hadn’t seen in years and thought he’d call since he was in town for a visit.
Michael read through the relatively short statement, beginning to end, asking only if he could change the wording where he had said something to the effect that it wouldn’t surprise him if Peggy were still into drugs after all these years.
“I don’t really know if she was or she wasn’t,” Michael said, feeling more cautious than he had when they first began their conversation. “Isn’t it enough that I mentioned her drug use back in college?”
“Go ahead and cross it off if it makes you feel any better,” Sterns said wearily. “Just initial next to the change.”
Michael crossed out the sentence in question, initialed it, then signed at the bottom and handed the statement back.
“How long are you planning on being in town?” the lieutenant asked.
“I don’t know,” Michael said. “Until I can track Teri down, I guess.”
Sterns nodded again, though Michael wasn’t sure if the lieutenant had actually heard him. He slipped the statement into a manila folder, thoughts apparently preoccupied by other matters. “You going to stay at the motel?”
“No, it’s not the best part of town. I think I’ll look for somewhere else to stay tonight.”
The lieutenant took a business card out of the middle drawer of the desk and handed it to him. “Give me a call and let me know where you’re staying, all right?”
“Sure,” Michael said, glancing down at the card. “Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”
[103]
Someone was in the apartment.
Teri was sure she had heard the front door close. She pulled back the bed sheets and sat up, her heart frantically racing a track in her chest. She grabbed her robe off the foot of the bed, tied the sash around her waist, and went to the bedroom door to listen.
“Time to get up, little missy.”
A whisper.
A man’s voice.
Close.
The bedroom door was unlocked. Teri reached out, her hands trembling, and engaged the lock, then took several absent steps backward. It wasn’t Walt, she knew that much. And she didn’t want to think who it might be. Only that it might be no one at all, just the sounds of a strange apartment.
“Little miss—ssie,” came another call, and there was no mistaking this for the creak of an old floor board or the wail of a hot water heater.
Teri fell back on the bed, and grabbed at the phone with a sudden loss of motor skill that knocked the receiver off the cradle. The receiver did not reel in easily, but slammed first off the bed frame, then off the night stand before she was able to regain control of it. She tapped out a desperate 9-1-1, and raised the phone to her ear.
She was suddenly breathing heavily, and for a moment all she heard was the sound of the air entering and exiting her lungs. It was the sound of someone just beginning to lose her breath.
“Come on! Come on! Come on!”
No answer.
Teri hadn’t taken her eyes off the door, even as she had dialed. Now, as she hammered out the numbers again, she thought she could see the brass door knob beginning to turn and the sight sent a wave of dread through her body.
“Little miss—ssie.”
The voice was not one she recognized. That piece of information swirled around inside her head, compared itself with the voice of Mitch, and then concluded she really couldn’t be certain one way or the other. Teri held her breath and listened to the phone. The reality—that there was no dial tone—took a moment before it sank in like a heavy stone upon her chest. There was no dial tone. The phone was dead.
“Time to get up, little sleepy-head.”
This was followed by what at first sounded like a huge explosion. Teri’s body did the rattle of a marionette and she let out a whimper that felt shameful. He had brought his fist down against the hollow-core door like a hammer. She dropped the phone
“Gonna let me in, little miss—ssie?”
No, I’m not going to let you in.
There was an aluminum-sash window into the room, covered by a thin veil of curtains that did little to keep the sunlight out during the day. Teri had opened and closed the window several times since she had begun her stay here, and she knew outside was a two story drop to a concrete walkway below. She looked from the door to the window, back again, and found herself unlatching the window and gazing down at the cold, chalky concrete below.
Behind her, the man’s fist came down against the door again, sending a wave of thunderous hot air rolling across the room like an earthquake. Teri felt it pass through her. She recoiled and briefly considered the window again.
“No way to treat a guest now is it?” he said.
It was his foot that came down against the door next. He had wound up for this one, she imagined, because the door splintered around the molding and made an ugly sound that reminded her of a bone breaking.
He tried the knob again, unsuccessfully. Then, drunkenly, sloppily, added, “Almost together again, dearie.”
Teri started for the lamp on the night stand, on the far side of the bed, closest to the door. One final kick and the door exploded into the room, nearly torn completely from its hinges. In the doorway, like an image out of a nightmare, stood the silhouette of a man whose entire body seemed to be venting rage. His glowering eyes narrowed. He swung his arm across his body and slammed his fist sidelong into the door, and didn’t flinch when Teri knew it must have hurt. A cut opened across the back of his hand. Blood began to gush forth in a crimson tide.