Dismantled (27 page)

Henry closes the journal. Goes to the phone and dials Winnie’s number.

“Hello?” she says sleepily. Clearly, he woke her. He tells her about the fire. About the Danner doll.

“I think it’s Suz,” he says. “And I heard it speak earlier tonight.” He knows she’ll understand. That she’s the one person who might believe him. Regardless of what Tess thinks, Henry knows what he heard. He’s not crazy. And it wasn’t, like Tess suggested, just Emma talking to herself. There was someone else in the room. And that someone had a voice just like Suz’s.

“Emma took your wig, Winnie. She must have found it in the bathroom that day. She’s got it on the damn doll. It’s just a rag doll stitched together by a kid, but it’s so much like Suz.”

She listens. Says, “Mmm-hmm,” to show she hears and understands.

“There’s more. Before the fire, I went out to Tess’s studio. She took the photos I’d saved from the cabin, the Polaroids of all of us. And she’s been drawing images from that summer. There was a picture of Suz in the lake, going under.”

There’s silence on the other end of the line. Henry wonders if Winnie’s still there. If she’s drifted off to sleep. He bites the inside of his cheek.

“I don’t know what I’d do if you hadn’t come back,” Henry tells her, almost whispering now. “You’re the one person who understands. The only one I can talk to. And I wonder if maybe—”

“Henry,” Winnie cuts him off, suddenly sounding wide awake. “I’ve been thinking. I hate to say this, but if Suz really has found a way back, she may not have the best of intentions. Think about what really happened to her that night. What if it’s revenge she wants? You remember how vicious she could be when she was alive, think about what she might be capable of now that she’s really got nothing to lose. I loved Suz more than life itself, you know that. But I think that if she’s back, then we’re all in terrible danger. We’ve got to find a way to stop her.”

T
WO A.M. AND
T
ESS
lies in bed, tossing and turning, thinking over the day: Claire, the fire, the key in Henry’s pocket. And the Danner doll that Henry swears is Suz somehow. Jesus. What next?

Emma said she got the idea to do her own sculpture after working on the moose yesterday. Damn moose. Tess still can’t believe Winnie’s putting it back together—what is she up to? Weren’t they better off forgetting all about it? Leaving the poor thing to rest in peace in a pile of sticks and rotted canvas behind the cabin?

Tess remembers how he stood once, carefully erected, wooden joints aching to move, canvas skin stretched and painted, brought to life under their careful hands.
A magnificent beast,
Suz called him, echoing Spencer’s own words.

Now that he is back together again, a new skin on, does his body remember, in bits and snatches, like pieces of a dream, his previous incarnation?

This is something the old Tess, the Compassionate Dismantler Tess, might have believed—that the objects we create have souls, memories.

Does the moose remember Suz inside him that night, beating like a heart? They were by the side of the road. He’d ridden in a van and was lifted carefully out by the group. Tess got her fingers pinched between his back leg and the door of the van. “Bugger!” she said, letting go of the leg, making the whole moose shift.

“We’re losing him!” Henry yelped. He was beside Tess, holding the other leg, the butt of the moose resting against his chest.

“Everything okay out there?” Suz called. She and Winnie were inside the van, guiding the moose’s head and front legs.

“We’ve got it,” said Tess as she grabbed the leg again, fingers throbbing. Together they backed him out and down.

A logging truck roared by as they were unloading him, barely slowing. As if it wasn’t so strange to see a group of four people lifting a stiff moose from the back of a van and putting him by the side of the road like a mile marker or a sign warning drivers about a dangerous curve or saying
FOOD AHEAD, 2 MILES
.

Henry pulled the van onto the edge of a small field farther down the road. Suz opened the door in the moose’s chest and climbed inside. Quietly, they waited. Crickets chirped. Mosquitoes buzzed, landed on the moose’s back, then flew away, confused by his lack of flesh.

Then, there was word.

“He’s coming!” a shouted whisper from Henry, who was on lookout up the road. Tess ducked behind a tree as she saw Spencer rounding the bend on his bicycle, the one small headlight on the handlebars glowing dimly.

Suz shifted inside the moose. Began to call his name.

“Spencer,” she called, her voice low and growling. “Spencer.”

Then, Spencer slowed and finally stopped, still straddling his mountain bike. He had a black helmet on with a little rearview mirror clipped to it that made him look like a beetle with antennae. He looked utterly flabbergasted.

Tess watched, peeping from behind the tree, biting her lip to keep from laughing. Weeks of planning and here they were at last, pulling it off. She imagined the celebration they’d have later at the cabin, patting each other on the back, saying,
Did you see his face?

“I have a riddle for you,” Suz said, her voice muffled and strange inside the moose. “You’re in a cement room with no door or windows. All you have in the room is a mirror and a table. How do you escape?”

Spencer clung to his bicycle and stared in disbelief. He was being asked a riddle by a moose. These things don’t happen every day.

Tess thought that the moose, as beautiful as he was, surely couldn’t have looked that realistic to Spencer, even in the dark. But maybe it didn’t matter. He was held there, transfixed by the absurdity of the sight before him.

A mosquito landed on Tess’s arm. Not wanting to move, she let it stay there, fattening itself on her blood.

“Answer the riddle, Spencer!” bellowed the moose.

He stood in silence for a few seconds, then jumped back on his bicycle.

“Wrong answer!” the moose told him. “Winnie!” Suz called and out of the woods stepped Winnie with the gun.

Spencer seemed almost relieved to see her, and then, as it slowly dawned on him that there was a gun pointed at his head, he looked worried. Suz swung open the door in the moose’s chest and climbed out.

Tess came out from her hiding place. What the fuck was this? This was not part of the prank they’d planned. They were just supposed to let him ride off, confused and maybe a little terrified. She rubbed at the bite on her arm that itched like mad.

“Henry, go get the van,” Suz ordered. “When he gets back, we shove Spencer and the bike in.”

No one moved.

“What are you going to do to me?” Spencer asked.

“You couldn’t answer the riddle, so you’re being kidnapped,” she said. “And held for ransom.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding,” Spencer said.

“Shut up!” Winnie said, putting the barrel of the rifle right against his head.

“This wasn’t part of the plan,” Tess argued. She looked at Suz, said, “We weren’t supposed to kidnap him! We were just going to scare him, that’s what you said.”

“Great art is all about improvisation,” said Suz.

Tess rolled her eyes, then looked to Henry, who was standing frozen, keys in his hand. “Tell her, Henry. Tell her this is too fucking much.”

Stand up to her for once. Choose me this time.

Henry sucked in his cheeks, studied the ground, then walked down the road toward the van.

She had her answer.

Shit. Here she was, pregnant, in love with a man who clearly loved someone else. Fucking hopeless.

Tess made up her mind then to pack up and go. Not tell Henry about the pregnancy, just sneak off and get an abortion, see if she could still get into grad school at the Rhode Island School of Design. She was sick and fucking tired of playing second fiddle to the almighty Suz. It was time to get a clue and move on.

Henry backed the van up the road, the reverse lights coming at them like angry eyes.

“Now,” Suz ordered, “let’s get the moose and prisoner into the van and get the fuck out of here before someone comes along.”

The moose was lifted again, into the back of the Love Machine. Spencer sat beside him, worriedly picking at a small tear in the moose’s leg. Winnie was crouched, gun across her lap, watching over them, daring either Spencer or the moose to try to escape.

“Val, this is stupid,” Spencer said.

“Her name is Winnie, asshole!” Suz snapped.

Henry started the van. Tess sat in the passenger seat beside him, turned so that she could see the others in the back.

“You should have answered the fucking riddle,” Winnie said, and for a second, she looked almost sorry. Then she raised the gun to Spencer’s head and smiled. Tess held her breath. Suz kissed Winnie on the mouth, slipped a hand down into her shirt and fondled her breast, watching Spencer, laughing.

T
HE CLOCK ON THE
dashboard says 10:21
A.M
. as Winnie downshifts to get up the hill, navigates her way over the rocks and ruts in four-wheel drive. The pickup can handle a rough ride, but the sheet of window glass she’s got wrapped up in the bed cannot.

She’s thinking about everything Henry told her on the phone last night: the fire in Tess’s studio, the Danner doll that looks just like Suz. In the back of her mind, she hears Suz say,
There’s no such thing as coincidence
.

Winnie pulls up next to the cabin, turns off the truck, brushes the hair from the blond wig out of her face, and hops out of the cab. She begins unwrapping the glass and sees that it made the trip from the hardware store in one piece. Good news. She’ll have the window fixed by lunchtime.

“I’ve got a riddle for you.” The voice, muffled but firm, coming from just behind her.

Winnie turns toward the moose sculpture, every hair on her body raised.

“Four college friends form a subversive art group ten years ago.” Winnie stands frozen as a man steps out from behind the moose. He’s wearing khaki trousers, a blue polo shirt, and hiking boots. His hair is short, more gray than brown.

“The funny thing is,” he continues, “all of their records disappear. There’s no history of them ever having attended Sexton College. But it wasn’t that long ago. People remember. Other students. Faculty. They remember a group called the Compassionate Dismantlers. I talked to one man, a Professor Berussi, who remembered the group quite well. He’s down in Florida now, teaching at a community college. He told me an interesting story about how he got fired from Sexton.”

Winnie holds her breath.

“But what’s even more interesting to me at this point is what happened to these four students after they left Sexton. Their leader seems to have dropped off the face of the earth after graduation. And the ex-boyfriend of one of the members kills himself ten years later after getting a postcard that seems to be from someone in the group. So what’s going on, Val? Or should I call you Winnie?”

“Winnie’s fine,” she says.

“I’m Bill Lunde,” he tells her, holding out his hand to shake.

Winnie takes his hand, shakes. Her own hand trembles a little and she prays he doesn’t notice.

“I was hired to look into the death of Spencer Styles,” Bill says. “Which, in a suicide, really means looking into his life. His family wants answers. Closure.”

Winnie nods.

“What’s with the disguise?” he asks.

Shit.

“It’s an interesting choice. Going around town dressed as your ex-lover.” Bill pulls out the old Sexton catalog with the photo of Suz and her giant wooden man on the cover.

There’s a little whistling sound as Winnie has a sharp intake of air. She feels a stabbing pain in her chest. Panic in its purest form. Certain animals die from panic. Little rodents. Shrews. Voles.

She says nothing.

“It’s my job to find these things out,” Bill says. He doesn’t sound especially proud of himself, just as if he’s stating a simple fact. “I know about you and Suz. In fact, I know everything you’ve done since you left Vermont that summer. I know you got fired from your job at the 7-Eleven for stealing over-the-counter medications. And I know about the hospitalizations.”

He says this last word slowly, emphasizing each syllable. He’s talking to her, she realizes, like she’s a crazy person. A little dim-witted from meds, not in touch with reality.

“What I don’t know is why you came back here.”

He stares at her, waiting.

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I got a postcard,” she tells him, her voice as level as she can make it. “Sent from Vermont. My stepmother forwarded it to me.” She reaches into her purse and pulls out the tattered card, handing it over. Bill Lunde studies it, nodding.

“I decided to come back here. To try to figure out what was going on. Who might have sent the postcard. When I heard about Spencer, getting to the bottom of all this seemed even more important.”

“And what did you learn?” Bill asks.

Winnie shakes her head. “Not much. Henry and Tess didn’t get postcards, which I thought was strange.”

Bill nods again, apparently agreeing. “So where’s Suz?” he asks.

The stabbing panic pain in her chest moves up into her throat, constricting her vocal chords.

“I don’t know. We all stayed here for a while after graduation, then went our separate ways. Suz said she was heading out to California. San Francisco, I think.”

“And you never heard from her again? Never tried to find her?”

Winnie shakes her head. No. She didn’t.

Bill pulls out his wallet, removes a card, and scribbles something on the back before handing it over.
BILL LUNDE, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR
. Then a cell phone number. On the back, he’s written
Alpine Motor Court, room 7
and the phone number there.

“Call me if you decide there’s anything else you’d like to share. I’ll be in town for the next few days. I’ve got more digging to do.”

She forces a smile. “Sure. If I think of anything,” she tells him, dropping the card into her purse and watching him navigate his way back down the driveway on foot.

He’ll be back, babycakes.

“I know,” Winnie whispers. “I’ll be ready.”