Mercy Street(63)

She felt vindicated, weirdly elated. The guy had avoided the security cameras on purpose. To Claudia it was an admission of guilt.

Her feeling of triumph was short-lived. What had they learned, exactly? The photographer was a nondescript White guy in a Sox cap. There was no more common phenotype in the city of Boston. She saw this guy fifty times a day.

“Now we know who to look for,” said Luis. “The next time he shows up, I’ll be waiting for him.”

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MANY MONTHS, CLAUDIA LEFT WORK early. She felt grimy, overcaffeinated, desperate for a shower. She retrieved her car from the garage under the Common and joined the scrum of traffic—remembering, again, why she always took the T.

Rush hour huffed and honked around her, the daily disaster. A motorized wheelchair stalled in a crosswalk. An irritable driver leaned on his horn. Driving in Boston was like being inside a video game, a closed system with its own interior logic. The streets were booby-trapped with hidden dangers: broken glass in the road, raised manhole covers, kamikaze pedestrians. On a traffic island a man was weeping. It seemed like a reasonable response.

When her phone rang she nearly didn’t answer. The caller was an unfamiliar number with a 617 area code.

“Oh, Stuart!” she said when she heard his voice. “I didn’t recognize the number.” They had spoken only yesterday. It felt like a long time ago.

“I’m at the lab,” he said, sounding rushed. “Listen, Nora just called. I know it’s last-minute, but is there any chance you’re free Saturday? She wants to switch weekends.”

Such conversations had become routine between them: the complexities of Stuart’s custody arrangement, the ongoing negotiations with his ex-wife. His life was complicated. If he and Claudia wanted to get laid regularly, they had to be organized.

“I can’t,” she said quickly. “I have to run up to Maine. To check on my mom’s place.” Already she’d postponed the trip twice, due to two monster nor’easters. Now she was grateful for the excuse. Twelve hours earlier, she’d climbed out of another man’s bed. She needed to collect herself.

At home she showered at great length. The spray landed like needles on her skin. She thought of Timmy’s bare face, the face of a stranger. When he’d answered the door he’d already seemed naked.

The first part of the evening, she recalled vividly. The magnificent car, traffic lights flashing. The dull thump of windshield wipers, regular as a heartbeat; a thousand snowflakes melting on the glass. What happened later, in the half-light of Timmy’s bedroom, was less clear, but the sting of the shower offered certain clues.

His face was not as smooth as it looked. She had experienced this before: the treachery of blond stubble. Her breasts were scraped raw, her thighs and belly.

Her skin remembered everything.

THAT NIGHT SHE LAY AWAKE A LONG TIME, THINKING OF THE bag of weed she’d bought from Timmy—still sitting, probably, on the couch where she’d left it. All she had to do was text him: Hey, are you awake? In half an hour she could be smoking a bowl and watching his giant television. In thirty-five minutes she could be back in his bed.

Finally she gave up on sleep and turned on the television. Once again, Dateline was in full swing.

This episode did not disappoint. It satisfied in all the usual ways. The victim was a mother of four, a beloved Sunday-school teacher, a loyal wife, sister, neighbor, and friend. And yet her virtue did not save her. Her husband had snuffed out her life using a pillow from the marital bed. He was, it developed, a man of unsavory habits, a compulsive gambler with a much younger, distinctly nonmaternal piece on the side.

“The victim lived a low-risk lifestyle,” the homicide detective said.

The victim did not venture out after dark without male supervision. She did not drink or take drugs or associate with people who did. She did not, even once—in an impaired state, at the end of a long winter, in a grand mal seizure of loneliness and anxiety and paralyzing grief—fuck her weed dealer.

Not even once.

When Claudia went driving with Timmy, she left her phone behind. She wanted to disappear with him. She wanted never to be found.

If someone strangled her tomorrow, Dateline would have no interest. Of this she was absolutely sure.





15


Luther lived in a prefab house in the north end of Bakerton—a single-story cracker box held together with cheap plastic siding, textured to look like wood. To Victor the place looked flimsy as a Popsicle stand. Its only notable feature was the sturdy wooden ramp that led to the front door.

He parked his truck and stepped down, thinking how it took balls to live in such a house, which announced to the world that a disabled person lived there—a man unable to navigate the world on his own two legs, whose survival depended on a battery-operated chair. In the post-collapse world, the ramp would be a liability. Knowing this, Luther had taken appropriate precautions. Long ago he’d given Victor a tour of his arsenal: enough firepower to equip a small army.

Luther, no question, had balls of steel.

The front door was open a crack, the screen door latched. Victor could hear the whir of the chair as Luther rolled to the door. He was already deep in conversation, which was classic Luther. You simply tuned him in, like a radio station. It was clear he’d be having the same conversation anyway, whether or not you were in the room.