Say Goodbye

“Rough case?” she finally ventured.

“You know how it is.”

“Guess I do.”

“Don’t wait up.”

“Guess I won’t.”

“We can’t keep doing this, you know,” he said abruptly. “You’re working late, I’m working late. We pass each other in the night, with barely a peck on the cheek. What kind of way is this to live?”

“Our way,” she said softly.

“Something’s gotta give.”

“I’m ready to talk when you are.”

“Oh sure, now that you’re no longer busy.”

The open hostility in his voice shocked her. She clammed up again, feeling she’d waded into a minefield, not sure how to proceed.

“Ah fuck it,” Mac said. “I’m tired, that’s all.” Then he hung up on her.

When her cell phone rang again, she picked it up without thinking. She thought it might be Sal, reporting more news. She hoped it might be Mac, offering an apology.

Instead, she got silence.

And then she knew.

She sat back in her chair, already digging around in her jacket, trying to find her mini-recorder.

“Why don’t you care?” the voice asked, high-pitched, ti

“I’m listening,” she said, fumbling the recorder, finally getting it on top of her desk, switching it on.

“I thought you would care,” the voice echoed petulantly, ping-ponging through the earpiece, “…do something.”

“Let’s meet,” she said evenly. “Talk in person. I want to help.”

“It’s not my fault. ‘Step into my parlor,’ said the spider to the fly. And they do, they do.”

“Tell me your name. I need an address, a phone number. I’ll list you as a confidential informant. No one will know but us.”

But the caller wasn’t listening to her. His voice had grown to a higher-pitched whine, sounding angry. “Why didn’t you try harder? You forgot about us. You abandoned us to his web. Now it’s your turn. He’s go

“Veronica Jones,” she said crisply. “The other women…I know what he did, but I need proof. What does he do with them? Where does he hide their bodies? If you help me find them, I can make this stop.”

But the voice didn’t respond. She heard silence, followed by a crackle of interference. Then, when she had almost given up: “I’m go

She hesitated, then took a gamble: “You mean like Tommy Mark Evans?”

“That was not my fault!” the voice cried. “You don’t know what it’s like. Once his mind’s made up there’s nothing you can do.”

“Then meet with me. Explain it to me. Help me help you.”

“No. Too late. You had your chance. Now it’s my turn, and I’m go

“I don’t know what that means.”

“All I have to do is kill you.”

“Pardon?”

The caller was agitated now. “Someone loved me once. A long time ago. I wish I could remember her face. But she’s gone now. This is all I have left. I want to survive. I want to graduate. I will kill you.”

“Let me help you!”

“Say goodbye,” the voice whispered, then the caller was gone.

Night was falling by the time Kimberly checked out for the day, taking the elevator down to the lobby, walking out to the parking garage. Temperature hovered around the high forties, cool enough to make her hunch her shoulders inside her camel-colored coat, scarf wrapped tight around her neck.

The sprawling office park was quiet as she followed the sidewalk along the embankment, shallow stream to her right, parking garage to her left. She had one hand in her pocket, curled around her car fob, largest key tucked between two fingers like a shank.

The wind whispered over the slight hill, stirring the hair at the nape of her neck, tickling the upturned collar of her coat.

She turned to study the emptiness behind her, picked up her step.

The shadows grew longer, chasing her into the parking garage toward the crouched form of her station wagon. She didn’t relax until she had checked the full interior, including the backseats and cargo space. Even then, sliding behind the wheel, closing the door, hitting all the locks, she could feel her hands tremble as Baby McCormack gave a fluttering little kick to her side.

“It’s okay, baby,” she whispered. “You’re safe, everything’s all right.”

But she wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince anymore, her baby or herself.

TWENTY-SEVEN

“Time spent in the company of spiders can cure anyone of his sentimentality about nature.”

FROM “SPIDER WOMAN,”

BY BURKHARD BILGER, New Yorker, MARCH 5, 2007

DINNER WAS A SOMBER AFFAIR. KIMBERLY OVER-COOKED the meat, burned the gravy, and remembered why she stuck to takeout. Her father and Rainie tried to be kind about it. They praised the microwaved green beans and moved bites of chicken-fried steak around their plates in an appearance of eating.

If they were curious about Mac’s absence, they didn’t say anything and Kimberly didn’t feel like talking about it. What was there to say, anyway? He was working late. Happened all the time.

“We went to the aquarium today.” Rainie spoke up in a determined voice. “What an amazing place. I particularly enjoyed petting the stingrays.”

“Uh-huh,” Kimberly said.

“Quincy, what about you? What did you enjoy most?”

Kimberly’s father blinked, a deer caught in headlights. “Ummm, the beluga whales.”

“Yes, they were also beautiful. And very playful. I had no idea!”

“Uh-huh,” Kimberly said again.

“So I’m thinking tomorrow we’ll visit the Coke museum. I never realized an entire state could worship soda pop until we arrived here. What do you think, Quincy?”

“Sounds like a plan.” He had picked up his wife’s forced enthusiasm.

Kimberly set down her fork. “Dad, what was Mom like when she was pregnant?”

That brought the conversation up short.

“What?” her father asked.

“Did she have morning sickness, blotchy skin, mood swings? Or was she one of those radiant pregnant women, all aglow with maternal anticipation? Maybe she knit booties, stenciled nursery walls, made list after list of potential baby names…”

“Your mother? Knitting?”

“Was she happy? Did you guys have Amanda’s birth all pla

“Kimberly, in all honesty, that was over thirty years ago-”

“Well, you must remember something! Anything! Come on, Dad. I’d ask Mom directly, except, you know, she’s dead!”

Quincy fell silent. Kimberly blinked her eyes, ashamed by her own outburst, the emotion that had risen out of nowhere and now clogged her throat. She should apologize. Say something. But she couldn’t, because if she opened her mouth, she was going to burst into tears.

Her father drew in a breath. “I’m sorry, Kimberly,” he said quietly. “I know you have questions. And I would like to answer them, I would. But to tell you the truth, I don’t remember much about Mandy’s birth, or even your own. I think when your mother was pregnant with Amanda, I was working a string of bank robberies in the Midwest. Four men in an unmarked white cargo van. They liked to pistol-whip the tellers, even when the women were cooperating with their demands. I remember interviewing eyewitness after eyewitness, trying to get a feel for how the team operated. And I remember walking into the ninth bank and discovering that, this time, they had shot the teller between the eyes. Heather Norris was her name. Nineteen-year-old single mother. She had just started at the bank in order to earn enough money to go to college. Those were the things that made an impression on me. As for your mother and what she was going through…”