Death Spiral (21 page)

Twenty-one

People trickle into the street, but they're drawn to the methadone clinic, not to us, and nobody notices two shadowy figures racing through the dark, away from the crime.

“Holy shit!” Jesse cries when we reach his car and scramble inside. He turns the key, but the three-hundred-dollar beast just sputters and dies. “Fuck! Come on!” he shouts and turns the key again. This time the engine sparks to life. Jesse floors it and peels out onto Twenty-third.

My stomach roils as he blows through a yellow light and screeches around a corner. I roll down the window and heave painfully against my bruised throat, but nothing comes out.

Jesse glances from the rear view mirror to me. “You okay?”

I feel around my chest and neck, then take a few deep pulls of air to confirm, yes, I can breathe, and no, I'm not about to die. Breathing hurts, but the air goes in and out, and I seem to be able to swallow and do all the normal functions, so I nod. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with me. No permanent physical damage anyway. Jesse, on the other hand, I'm not so sure about—he's sweating, his fingers tremble on the wheel, and his face has turned a shade of white that makes a vampire look tan.

He glances out the rear view mirror again. “I don't think he's following us.”

“I don't think so either,” I say, rolling up the window and locking the door. “But what the hell was the Rat Catcher doing at the clinic? He's a drug dealer. What does he have to do with Dr. Wydner?”

“I don't know,” Jesse says, hands trembling. “But we have to go to the police.”

“No way,” I burst, remembering Officer Varelli's words:
someone like you.
“Not when I was at a methadone clinic after hours, and the only person who could be an alibi for why I was there is dead, so gee, I guess it looks like maybe I broke in and killed the guy.”

“Then where should we go?”

“I don't know. I can't go home. The Rat Catcher knows where I live.” The words have hardly escaped my lips when a new fear surges through me:
Aunt T
. I find my phone, still somehow buried in the recesses of my bag, and punch her number.

Come on, answer.

She picks up on the third ring.

“Hi, it's me,” I blurt. “You have to listen. Where are you?”

“I'm home. What's wrong? Are you—”

“You're not safe. I'll tell you everything. I promise. But please, something really bad is going on. I'll explain later. Just get out of there.”

“Faith, what are you talking about? What story are you making up this time? ” I hear the eye rolling in her voice, the distrust.

“It's not a story. I promise. Just go someplace else.” I'm begging now, groveling for her to leave before the Rat Catcher can find her and…I don't let myself finish the thought.

“Okay. Calm down.” Aunt T doesn't sound scared. If anything she sounds annoyed. I picture her lounging on the leather couch, a glass of wine in hand, her stocking feet stretched on the coffee table. “You're acting crazy. Just tell me if you're okay.”

“I'm fine,” I insist as I pull down the visor and examine the purplish bruise starting to form above my collarbone. “Just go.”

“Go where?”

“To Sam's. Anywhere. It doesn't matter.”

“Faith, I just got home. I thought you were studying. What's this—”

“Listen to me!” I shout, cutting her off. “The stuff I told the police was all true. I can't explain now, but I will. I promise, but you have to leave.”

“Okay, okay, I'll go to Sam's, but please, you're scaring me. Where are you?”

“I'm on the move. I'll call you later.”

I hang up before she can say protest, then turn off my phone and press my palms to my eyelids. My mother's face flickers again into focus, but this time she's not so real. It's just the pixels of my imagination painting the picture of what I want to see. I swallow and the dots break apart and reconfigure. Now it's Dr. Wydner painted in my mind's eye. His broken body. His spilled blood. His eyes. His face. His words:
Take this. It'll explain
….
It was too risky to put in the mail
…
. That's why you had to come here.
…

My eyes jerk open. The envelope! I'd forgotten all about it. I reach into my bag. It's not there. I kick at the empty soda cans, books, and papers littering the floor. I turn my pockets inside out. Finally, I dump everything out of my bag.

“Oh my god, Jesse. Dr. Wydner gave me an envelope. He said it would explain everything. It's not here. We have to go back. I—”

“You mean this?” Jesse reaches into his coat and pulls out a yellow envelope tucked into the waistband of his jeans. He tosses it onto my lap with the rest of the clutter. “I saw you drop it. I grabbed it when the alarm went off. I thought the Rat Catcher was going to…” His voice chokes, and he doesn't finish the sentence.

In my mind I finish it for him:
Kill me.
Like they killed my mother.
Kill me
. Like they killed Melinda.
Kill me.
Like they killed Dr. Carisle and Dr. Wydner. I'm sure of it now. Their deaths were all murders.

The question isn't just why anymore, but who's next?

I touch my forehead to the cool of the glass and look out the window. Buildings warp and bend through my tears. Cars speed by like missiles, their headlights staining the night. We pass a sign that says
Thank you for visiting Philadelphia.

“The city of brotherly love,” I snort, then turn and slam my fist into the door. I'm about to take another swing, but Jesse reaches across the seat and grabs my arm.

“You're the bravest person I know,” he says. “And the stupidest, too.”

I drop a trembling hand into my lap. “Yeah? Well, I'm just glad there's someone stupider than me. How the hell did you find me?”

By some miraculous brain-to-brain osmosis, Jesse understands my clumsy attempt at gratitude for saving my life, and a trace of a smile passes across his lips. “When you took that phone call in the auditorium I knew it wasn't about the cat. You're a terrible liar. Like the child she never had? Give me a break. I knew something was wrong, so I followed you. The whole FBI could've been on your ass and you wouldn't have noticed.” His smile disappears. The muscles in his forearm flex as he grips the wheel tighter. “I waited outside the clinic, behind a dumpster in the alley. Everything seemed okay at first. But when I saw the Rat Catcher go inside I got nervous. And then I heard the gun go off. I didn't think. The door was still open. There was glass everywhere. Someone was dead and…” He coughs and shakes his head. “They say you can lift a car if you have enough adrenaline. Compared to that, pushing a file cabinet onto a guy was easy.” The explanation must spark his nervous system back into action because his fingers start to tremble again, and he's back to checking the rearview mirror. “What happened in there?”

I tell him about the call from Dr. Monroe earlier today, about genetic IPF and how my mom didn't have the mutation two years ago, but had it before she died. I tell him how I left messages for both Dr. Glass and Dr. Wydner to tell them what I'd found out, and how Dr. Wydner called me and told me to meet him at the clinic.

“He died to save me, Jesse,” I whisper. “He was protecting me.”

Jesse slows as he curves off the interstate. I hadn't been paying attention to where we were going, but the star-filled sky, unblemished by millions of lights, tells me we've left the city. I look out the window and see a fat bulldog dressed in a tartan sweater trot down the sidewalk and lift his leg on a hedge. His faithful owner, bundled against the weather, trails along behind. Station wagons and SUV's decorate the driveways of the big houses with the landscaped yards that even in winter look pretty. It's as if there's a protective membrane around this neighborhood that keeps outside shit at a distance, and we've just punctured that membrane and dragged in that outside shit with us like dog crap on the bottom of our shoes.

Jesse pulls up in front of a sprawling white house set back from the street. I've never been to this house, but I know exactly where we are: Hazel is parked in the driveway.

“No way,” I say. “No friggin' way.”

“Come, on, Faith. It'll be fine.”

I slide down in my seat and pick at a crust of dried blood on my upper lip. “Even if Anj and I were talking, which by the way we're not, I'm not dragging her into this. And come to think of it, I'd rather not get you killed either, so why don't you just go home and drop me off at some motel or something until I figure out what's in this envelope.”

Jesse doesn't flinch. He fixes me with his blue eyes and says, “Nice try, but you're not getting rid of me, so forget it.”

“Well, it's not like she'd let me in, anyway,” I mutter, pushing a limp strand of hair off my face.

“Wrong. You know what your problem is?”

“I'm too scared to get close to anyone?” I say, thinking back to my conversation with Anj the other day.

“No. You underestimate your friends.”

Jesse rests his elbow on the steering wheel. From his very long pause I get the feeling I'm not going to like what's coming next. “Duncan told me what happened between you and Anj.”

“And?”

“And I went to her after I saw you in the auditorium. We had a talk.”

“A talk?”

“Yeah, I was worried, so I told her about the phone call and the cat and my suspicion that you were about to do something stupid and dangerous and that I was going to find you.”

He opens the door and swings his feet to the ground before I can sock him in the face. Saving my life is one thing, interfering in my personal affairs another entirely.

“She told me to bring you to her house the second I found you. Where else are we going to go? You won't go the police. The Rat Catcher will never find us here, Faith.”

I'm about to give Jesse a piece of my mind and tell him there is no “we” or “us” in this, but just then Anj comes barreling out of the house in slippers and pink flannel two-piece pajamas. She pushes Jesse out of the way, grabs my arm, and pulls me over the center console and out the driver's side door. At first I think she's going to beat the crap out of me and I try to protect my face with my arms, but then my nose is smashed against her chest, her arms are choking the life out of me, and I'm thinking the Rat Catcher couldn't kill me, but Anj's hug will.

“You're such a dumb ass,” she blurts before I can say anything. “You look awful. Get inside right now. My parents are at Chrissy's basketball game, and I want you in my room and cleaned up by the time they get back. And then you can tell me why your lip is bleeding, your shirt is torn, and you look like someone just tried to kill you.” She gasps when she says this, takes her hands off my shoulders, and covers her mouth. “Oh. My. God! Someone did try to kill you, didn't they?”

Anj leads us up the driveway. I must be too tired to protest because I follow her into the house, up the stairs, and down the hall to her bedroom. Her room is a page from the Pottery Barn catalogue, complete with a matching bedspread-pillow-curtain combo and a droopy-eared mutt lazing at the foot of her bed like he's been planted there for a photo shoot. I linger in the hall not wanting to stain such tidy perfection with my filth.

“Well, what are you waiting for? You're a mess.” Anj yanks me into the room, then turns back to Jesse. “Wait there,” she orders and slams the door on his face. The dog leaps off the bed and squeezes underneath Anj's desk. Anj scurries across the room and kneels beside him. “This is Zig,” she tells me.

“Nice to meet you, Zig,” I mutter, reaching out a hand for the dog to sniff. Zig just moves further back against the wall as if trying to disappear altogether. “You and me both, dude,” I whisper.

“Don't feel bad. He's from the pound. You know how rescue dogs can be.” She gets up and points to a door on the far end of the room. “Bathroom's in there. Use all the hot water you want.”

“Look Anj,” I say without moving.

“Don't ‘Look Anj' me. You stink. Go get clean.”

I sigh and follow her orders. No use arguing, and truth is I don't want to.

Anj must single handedly keep the local beauty and bath store in business. The rim of the tub is lined with about five hundred skincare products. I take my time under the hot water as I try to cleanse the evil from my naked body. When I've rubbed myself pink and raw, I step out of the shower and wrap myself in a fluffy monogrammed towel. Anj hands me a Haverford High track team sweat suit to wear, even though, like me, she's never been on an athletic team in her life. When I'm done dressing, she invites Jesse back into the room.

Jesse tumbles through the door and rushes over to me. “You okay?”

I nod. “You?”

“Like rock.”

“Really?”

“No, but I can fake it until I feel it.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and narrows his eyes as if daring me to contradict him.

Anj and Jesse stand there after that, watching me. I'm guessing it's an explanation they want, especially Anj who's still in the dark about what happened tonight. I'm about to give the details of what went down at the clinic, but I realize it's not an explanation I owe. It's an apology.

This part isn't destiny. There's no mutation that makes it impossible to say sorry.

“So,” I say, biting my lip and digging my toes into the carpet. “I could go into the really long, really boring explanation about how my mom started slamming heroin when I was a kid, and how that left me pretty fucked up, but we don't have all night, so I'm going to cut to the chase.” I take the breath Marta always nagged me about and let the oxygen carry the words to my lips. “I'm really sorry about ditching you guys. I'm sorry about not answering your calls and about lying and blowing you off.”