Riptide

He was a shrink; he hedged well. “Tell me why you believe this man is stalking you and making these phone calls to you, why you don’t believe that he wants to be your boyfriend, that it really all just boils down to an obsession and his possession of you?”

She closed her eyes. She’d thought and thought about why, but there wasn’t anything. Nothing at all. He’d targeted her, but why? She shook her head. “At first he said he wanted to know me. What does that mean? If he wanted that, why wouldn’t he just come over and introduce himself? If the cops wanted a nutcase to send to you, they should find him. What does he really want? I just don’t know. If I even had a supposition about it, I’d throw it out there, believe me. But the boyfriend thing? No, I don’t believe that.”

He sat forward, his fingertips pressed together, studying her. What did he see? What was he thinking? Did she sound insane? Evidently so, because when he said very quietly, gently even, “You and I need to talk about you, Ms. Matlock,” she knew he didn’t believe her, probably hadn’t believed her for a minute. He continued in that same gentle voice, “There’s a big problem here. Without intervention, it will continue to get bigger and that worries me. Perhaps you’re already seeing a psychiatrist?”

She had a big problem? She rose slowly and placed her hands on his desktop. “You’re right about that, doctor. I do have a big problem. You just don’t know where the problem really is. That, or you refuse to recognize it. That makes it easier, I guess.”

She grabbed up her purse and walked toward the door. He called after her, “You need me, Ms. Matlock. You need my help. I don’t like the direction you’re going. Come back and let me talk to you.”

She said over her shoulder, “You’re a fool, sir,” and kept walking. “As for your objectivity, perhaps you should consult your ethics about that, Doctor.”

She heard him coming after her. She slammed the door and took off ru

3

Becca kept walking, her head down, out the front doors, staring at her Bally flats. From the corner of her eye, she saw a man turn away from her, quickly, too quickly. She was at One Police Plaza. There were a million people, all of them hurrying, like all New Yorkers, focused on where they were going, wasting not an instant. But this man, he was watching her, she knew it. It was him, it had to be. If only she could get close enough, she could describe him. Where was he now?

Over there, by a city trash can. He was wearing sunglasses, the same opaque aviator glasses, and a red Braves baseball cap, this time backward. He was the bad guy in all of this, not her. Something hit her hard at that moment, and she felt pure rage pump through her. She yelled, “Wait! Don’t you run away from me, you coward!” Then she started pushing her way through the crowds of people to where she’d last seen him. Over there, by that building, wearing a sweatshirt, dark blue, long-sleeved, no windbreaker this time. She headed that way. She was cursed, someone elbowed her, but she didn’t care. She would become an instant New Yorker-utterly focused, rude if anyone dared to get in her way. She made it to the corner of the building, but she didn’t see any dark blue sweatshirt. No baseball cap. She stood there panting.

Why didn’t the cops believe her? What had she ever done to make them believe she was a liar? What had made the Albany cops believe she’d lied? And now, he’d murdered that poor old woman by the museum. She wasn’t some crazy figment in her mind, she was very real and in the morgue.

She stopped. She’d lost him. She stood there a long time, breathing hard, feeling scores of people part and go around her on either side. Just two steps beyond her, the seas closed again.

Forty-five minutes later, Becca was at Lenox Hill Hospital, sitting beside her mother’s bed. Her mother, who was now in a near-coma, was so drugged she didn’t recognize her daughter. Becca sat there, holding her hand, not speaking about the stalker, but talking about the speech she’d written for the governor on gun control, something she wasn’t so certain about now. “In all five boroughs, handgun laws are the same and are very strict. Do you know that one gun store owner told me that ‘to buy a gun in New York City, you have to stand in a corner on one leg and beg’?”

She paused a moment. For the first time in her life, she desperately wanted a handgun. But there was just no way she could get one in time to help. She’d need a permit, have to wait fifteen days after she’d bought the gun, and then hang around for probably another six months for them to do a background check on her. And then stand on one leg and beg. She said to her silent mother, “I’ve never before even thought about owning a gun, Mom, but who knows? Crime is everywhere.” Yes, she wanted to buy a gun, but if she did finally manage to get one, the stalker would have long since killed her. She felt like a victim waiting to happen and there was nothing she could do about it. No one would help her. She was all she had, and in terms of getting a hold of a gun, she’d have to go to the street. And the thought of going up to street guys and asking them to sell her a gun scared her to her toes.

“It was a great speech, Mom. I had to let the governor straddle the fence, no way around that, but I did have him say that he didn’t want guns forbidden, just didn’t want them in the hands of criminals. I did pros and cons on whether the proposed federal one-handgun-a-month law will work. You know, the NRA’s opinions, then the HCI’s-they’re Handgun Control, Inc.”

She kept talking, patting her mother’s hands, lightly stroking her fingers over her forearm, careful not to hit any of the IV lines.

“So many of your friends have been here. All of them are very worried. They all love you.”

Her mother was dying, she knew it as a god-awful fact, as something that couldn’t be changed, but she just couldn’t accept it down deep inside her where her mother had always been from her earliest memories, always there for her, always. She thought of the years ahead without her, but she simply couldn’t see it at all. Tears stung her eyes and she sniffed them back. “Mom,” she said, and laid her cheek against her mother’s arm. “I don’t want you to die, but I know the cancer is bad and you couldn’t bear the pain if you stayed with me.” There, she’d said the words aloud. She slowly raised her head. “I love you, Mom. I love you more than you can imagine. If you can somehow hear me, somehow understand, please know that you have always been the most important person in my life. Thank you for being my mother.” She had no more words. She sat there another half hour, looking at her mother’s beloved face, so full of life just a few weeks ago, a face made for myriad expressions, each of which Becca knew. It was almost over, and there was simply nothing she could do. She said then, “I’ll be back soon, Mom. Please rest and don’t feel any pain. I love you.”

She knew that she should run, that this man, whoever he was, would end up killing her and there was nothing she could do to stop him. If she stayed here. Certainly the police weren’t going to do anything. But no, she wasn’t about to leave her mother.

She rose, leaned down, and kissed her mother’s soft, pale cheek. She lightly patted her mother’s hair, so very thin now, her scalp showing here and there. It was the drugs, a nurse had told her. It happened. Such a beautiful woman, her mother had been, tall and fair, her hair that unusual pale blond that had no other colors in it. Her mother was still beautiful, but she was so still now, almost as if she were already gone. No, Becca wouldn’t leave her. The guy would have to kill her to make her leave her mother.

She didn’t realize she was crying again until a nurse pressed a Kleenex into her hand. “Thank you,” she said, not looking away from her mother.