Messages, a Psychological Thriller Read online

  In his rearview mirror, James sees the cop run his tongue over his front teeth. The cop seems to be looking right at him. Marking him.

  The teenagers turn and go the other way.

  James pulls into the next shopping center parking lot, shaking, overloaded. The message has been delivered, he can feel it. There is some pattern here, meant for him…for something he must see. Something he must find.

  Woman, old man, cop, teenagers…

  The number of letters and number of words and number of syllables have no connection. Nothing there. James puts his head down, covers his ears with his hands, closes his eyes. Minivan, wheelchair, traffic…no. That’s not anything, either. Maybe I was wrong, he thinks. He sits back. Throws himself back against the back of the seat. Once. Twice. Three times. Then he leans forward again, breathing out, emptying his lungs.

  He breathes deeply. Eyes closed, he wraps his arms over his chest and leans into them. Hugging himself, rocking gently. Thinking. Thinking. Waiting for the words. The ones that will make sense.

  Okay. Okay, I’m starting to see it, he thinks and squeezes himself shut, tighter and tighter. He realizes it must be further in, not obvious. Of course it’s not obvious, he thinks, joy beginning to spread through his stomach, it can’t be; this is intended for me to figure out.

  Only me.

  He thinks back to each encounter. Three words begin to float in his mind, indistinct at first, but then becoming clear. Then they are beyond clear, they are sharp. Sharp enough to slice. The words are: insectile (the minivan woman with her mirrored glasses), peeling (the old man with his bald head), blood (the cop, of course, the cop was telling him that it was sealed in blood, a blood bond, something)…twenty-one letters divided by six syllables is three and three remaining…the three teenagers…that’s it; it’s the teenagers.

  That’s what the cop was showing him. The three blood spots. The three teenagers.

  It is the last clue.

  James’ head snaps up as the realization pours into him. It fills every itchy place in his mind until there are no itchy places left. He feels calm and sees clearly.

  Yes, that’s the message. James feels sure of it.

  He turns back out of the lot and follows the teenagers.

  Chapter 2

  He has lost his mind, Lacey thinks. She thumbs through the small scraps of paper she found when she went to empty the bedroom trash. Each piece has been torn from the small notebook that James keeps in the drawer next to his side of the bed. He says it’s for writing down ideas. Ideas that come to him while he sleeps.

  These scraps each have one word written on them apiece. One has LAYCEE. The next has LAYCIE. The next has LAYCEY.

  “He’s going to make me batshit with this crap,” Lacey says, shaking her head. “I swear to God, LuLu…”

  LuLu headbutts Lacey’s leg in sympathy, then sits and stares up at her, tail swishing patiently. LuLu is a gray and black striped tabby, but Lacey thinks there must have been a Siamese in the lineage somewhere because LuLu has crossed, blue eyes. James says it’s the reason he got her. He said her crossed eyes make her look like she is concentrating extremely hard, but still too dumb to do anything with the information.

  Sometimes James sings to LuLu. In a sing-song voice he serenades her: Lu Lu, two two, even number…aaaaaangel!

  For a long time, Lacey found it funny. Endearing. But lately, well. Not so much.

  She crumples the scraps with her rearranged–improved, James would say–name and shoves them into the bag. She’s emptied every trashcan in the house, and the bag is only about three-quarters full. But she is going to throw it out anyway. James is at work, she thinks, so he’ll never know. It gives her a sense of satisfaction, as though she is getting away with something.

  She bends to scratch LuLu’s chin. LuLu’s eyes slit closed, and she rumbles her pleasure. Lacey pauses in her scratching, smiling in anticipation, and laughs when LuLu’s crossed eyes pop open to peer nearsightedly at her. LuLu makes a protesting squeak at the lack of attention.

  Lacey scratches and then kisses the top of LuLu’s head. “I’d miss you, Looney-Lu, if I left.”

  Lately, the thought of leaving crosses her mind at least once a day. She’d moved into this apartment–James’ apartment–three years ago when she was twenty-three. She and James hadn’t known each other for very long, about two months, but she’d been coming up to the end of her own lease, and it was either commit to another year in her hell-hole…or give it a try with James. It had seemed too soon, too impetuous, and she’d had a few sleepless nights wondering if it was an enormous mistake, but they’d smoothed things out. Ironed out the rough spots.

  When she’d met him, he was thirty-one and had seemed incredibly put together. Up till that time, she’d only dated high school and then college age boys, and the way things were in this day and age, most of them, even the recent college grads, lived at home with their parents.

  James had a career, not a job. He had a home…although it was technically a rental, it was in a luxury complex…much nicer than the hole-in-the-wall where she’d been renting. At her old apartment, her tiny bedroom would be filled at least once a week with the revolving red and blue lights of cops called to calm domestic disputes. She’d even been woken one night to the quick pop, pop, pop of a handgun as three kids chased another through the parking lot. The police had roared through seconds after, sirens blaring. She’d stayed up the rest of that night, shivering and staring out the bedroom window, paranoid and feeling very alone.

  James’ complex is gated with a security pass code. He even has a garage attached directly to his unit, and when he asked her to move in, he insisted that she park her car in there. He said he was content to use one of the visitor spots in the lot at the end of the building. There are sidewalks and trees and a walking trail that winds picturesquely through the development.

  The apartment itself is spacious and light. Two bedrooms, one of which James uses as an office. Small but well-appointed kitchen with granite countertops and stainless appliances. The living room is full of nice furniture, though nothing she would have picked. James tends toward contemporary, choosing spareness and clean lines over comfort.

  Lacey goes out the front, leaving the door unlocked, and walks two buildings over to the communal trashcans. Leaving the front door unlocked makes her nervous in a low undercurrent sort of way, even though she is only about twenty feet from the front door. And in a gated community. Who can get in there?

  But James is adamantly against leaving the door unlocked. Under any circumstances. He imagines a myriad of things that can happen in the time it takes to run the trash out. Disastrous things.

  Lacey isn’t a habitual worrier, but James’ habits are starting to rub off on her. It’s one of the reasons she thinks more and more about leaving. She doesn’t want to end up a mass of worries and what ifs. Like him.

  But she also doesn’t want to go back to her old, crappy apartment. She’s pretty sure that particular area hasn’t improved in the last three years.

  Sometimes she misses her family so much, she feels sixteen again. They live in Virginia, about five hours from where she is in south Jersey. The five-hour drive isn’t an insurmountable hurdle, but it is more than the physical distance that keeps her from going home.

  When she’d left at nineteen, she’d left because of a boy. Michael. Her parents, who’d been married for twenty-two years, had tried very hard to talk her out of it. But at nineteen, she’d felt all grown up, capable of taking charge and making her own decisions.

  Lacey sighs, recalling how sure she’d been of that boy…how much in love. So much so that she’d left everything behind. Even college.

  She wonders now, too, if part of her parents’ arguing so strenuously against it hadn’t helped to strengthen her resolve to leave. Almost as though she had to prove to them that she wasn’t the flibbertigibbet they seemed to assume.

  Their arguing that she stay home in Virginia and stay in college and th
en their demanding it had certainly made it harder to contemplate moving back home after everything had fallen through with Michael. And it fell through so quickly, too. That made it even worse. They were together for less than six months! That’s how long it taken her to realize that Michael was…well…kind of a jerk.

  She’d decided that she couldn’t go dragging back home, tail between her legs, with her parents’ arguments still ringing in her ears.

  She’d feel too much like a failure. Even if no one ever said the words ‘I told you so’…they were implied. Very adamantly implied.

  Lacey dumps the not-quite-full bag into the can and lowers the lid. She turns and sees James pulling into his parking spot. It’s too early for him to be home, way too early. She trots back to the apartment, hoping she can get inside before he spots her. But as she rounds to take the three short steps up to their door, he calls to her.

  “Lace! Hey, Lacey!”

  He is waving her over. “Come give me a hand?”

  He pulls a box from his back seat and puts it on the trunk and then bends back into the car to pull out another. He hands that one to Lacey, and she looks down and sees files, a pen cup, pens and the mug she had given him for Christmas last year–it has ‘World’s Best Boss’ on it–a joke from their favorite TV series. She’d bought it for him because after one pretty bad spat, when he’d been a little too strenuous in his attempts to bend her to do things his way, she’d snapped at him, “You’re not the boss of me!” and she’d really meant it, but it was such a childish thing to say that they’d both burst out laughing.

  She looks up at him now with puzzled curiosity, a nervous half-smile on her lips.

  “Did you quit?” she asks.

  James opens his mouth to answer, but her feet catch his attention. He shakes his head, his mouth tightening in disgust.

  “Lace, geez…” he says, “you know you shouldn’t be out here in bare feet. That’s just…think of everything on the ground, the dirt and spit and…” he grimaces, “the dog pee.”

  She tries to hide one bare foot behind the other and colors in embarrassment. She hefts the box higher and turns, heading toward the apartment. James watches her go, his disgust mingled with amusement and then faint lust as she bounces away in her PINK gym shorts, blonde ponytail swinging. Then he finds himself wishing–not for the first time–that the term was PINKER…the letters divided by the syllables made three. This thought rolls through his mind, rippling out and out, squashing both the amusement and the lust in its wake.

  By the time he has locked his car and gotten to the apartment, he’s forgotten Lacey’s swinging ponytail and deliciously plump calves and is once more mired in the world beneath the world, the world of messages. The inner meaning that he must figure out and act upon.

  Before all is lost.

  Chapter 3

  “So, what happened? Did you quit?”

  “Yes,” he says, without looking at her, “I quit.” He drops the box onto the floor and then turns to deposit his keys and wallet on the tray that sits dead center on the shallow table which sits dead center on the wall in the front entryway.

  Lacey leans against the counter near the sink, watching him. The front of the apartment is a combination foyer, living room, and kitchen. The kitchen is separated from the living space by a tall bar with four stools pulled neatly up to it. LuLu’s cat dishes are kept under the microwave cart. James had modified the piece of furniture himself, taking out the bottom shelf and making a kind of hidden nook with just enough room for LuLu to get in there and eat. And no messy dishes lying around.

  Lacey had put the box she carried in on the kitchen counter, and now James turns and another small wave of disgust distorts his features. He fists his hands on his hips, pushing his suit coat back, his head turned slightly away as he considers leaving the box on the counter, fighting the need to make everything…just right. Wanting to coexist in an imperfect world.

  Lacey loves that stance. She calls it his Superman. Even irritated, as she is now, it moves her with its appealing mixture of little-boy bravado and unconscious grace.

  “Listen,” he says, “that box…that was on the floor at the office, and…well, the office floor is dirty, you know? All those shoes, and…” he is at the counter, not meeting her eyes, and he grabs the box, “…and I’ll just put it over here on the floor with the other one. That just makes sense, right?”

  He glances at her, his face pink, and she smiles. She knows his quirks get more intense when he is in stressful situations. When his outer burdens become heavier, it seems his inner demons become squashed and talkative, pushing back. Active and complaining in a way that drives James to act, act, act on every thought.

  Lacey has none of these compulsions herself, but after three years of cohabitation, certainly she has come to understand the signs and even sometimes anticipate conditions that will drive his compulsions to surface. It makes her wonder, are the thoughts brought on by the stress? Or are they always there but better controlled? She wonders, too, how much of her own behavior has changed as a result of the sometimes not so subtle rearranging of everything. The insistence on cleanliness, order.

  “I think that they were doing some pretty criminal bookkeeping,” he says, reaching under the sink. He pulls out the sanitizing wipes. “I don’t want to get caught in the crossfire when they get raided by the FTC.” He wipes the counter–not just where the box had been, but end-to-end, in long strokes. His mind has extrapolated dirt from street and subway and bus to shoes to office to box to counter, and he feels slightly…nauseous, slightly…tilted. As he wipes the counter (already stringently clean), the world tilts back into place and the vague sense of vertigo corrects itself.

  “Do you think you should contact someone about it? Report them?” Lacey asks. She has only the most vague understanding of his job. Former job. She knows he is part of accounting. She knows that his company (former company) was involved with all the largest banks. Something to do with buying loans? Or selling loans? Selling shares of something? Lacey isn’t even clear on what shares are.

  “They’ll get audited. No one gets away with that kind of stuff forever. Cooking the books is a bad move, no matter what. It’s always a short-term gain with disastrous long-term consequences. Numbers don’t lie, Lace.” There is a grim satisfaction in his tone, and she wonders if he is conscious of it.

  He loves numbers. He’s tried to explain why, the ‘no lying’ part being primary among his reasons. He’s told her how he loves the solidity of them, how the end product of an equation will always be the same as long as the given properties aren’t changed. How numbers are ‘truer’ than anything else. But she doesn’t really get it. So what if numbers don’t lie? They also don’t tell jokes, make love or hug you when you’re down.

  “Well, but what are you going to do?” she asks. She has a twinge of guilty conscience. She knows part of her dismay is born purely of self-interest. Certainly her job couldn’t sustain their lifestyle. Graphic artists, especially second-shift production ones, don’t make boatloads of money. While James was fast approaching six digits, she had just celebrated her raise from fifteen-fifty to sixteen dollars an hour.

  “I’m not worried about it,” James says and reaches to loosen the knot of his tie. It is then that she sees he isn’t wearing one. He looks startled for a brief second and then lowers his hand. “I can get something at Stanley-Dean or Markson-Ritter.”

  Lacey stifles a smile. Even the company names are uptight, stalwart, and opaque. Like vests, she thinks, heavy wool vests on even heavier men. Cigars and monocles and small glasses of coppery liquid. Murmurs of dollar signs and foreign currency in heavily paneled clubs with deep, leather armchairs and green-shaded lamps.

  “What happened to your tie?” she asks. It’s an anomaly for him, not having that tie on. Sometimes, it is James she pictures when she sees the heavy man in a vest, with monocle and brandy. Or Scotch. Whatever it is the important men drink. And she doesn’t really like that picture o
f him.

  “Oh, I…” He looks away but then back, smiling. “I buried it in a planter. Sort of symbolic, I guess, burying my noose.” Then he laughs, and the stuffy banker blows away on his outrush of breath.

  Lacey laughs, too, and hugs him. He puts his face in her neck, and his arms tighten around her. This is the James she loves. The funny one; the defiant one. She is drawn, too, to his inexplicableness. The very qualities that confuse her, compel her. Sometimes enough so that she wonders about her own state of mental health.

  Later, she is making dinner. By this time of year–spring–she is tired of the heavy winter comfort food that sustained them through the coldest months. She wants light things: fresh greens and heirloom tomatoes with a drizzle of olive oil and a sweet, tangy splash of balsamic vinegar; firm, cold cheeses and smoked ham sliced tissue-paper thin; cucumbers, radishes, and peppers. Anything fresh with a pulse of earth still flowing through it. She is tired of hard tubers and heavy cuts of meat in need of long cooking times to tenderize and flavor them. Soon, the farm stands and farmers’ markets will pop up everywhere. Lacey loves to cook and anticipates the just-picked vegetables that will soon populate her recipes.

  Tonight, she is making white chili. A good compromise meal, she thinks, for a cool spring evening. She uses fresh ground chicken from her favorite butcher and slices garlic bulbs coaxed from their parchment paper skins. She has made a salad of baby spinach leaves, even though James says he hates how spinach leaves a fuzzy layer on his teeth.