The Man From Primrose Lane Part 35

"You really should have cleared this with me."

"Is it a problem? Because I'd be happy to speak with the director if you-"

"No problem," she snipped. "This way." Habersham turned on her dangerously tall heels and clunked toward the doors. We followed slowly and she had to wait for us every few feet until she was rolling her eyes openly at my feebleness. To be honest, I did play it up a little. "You'll have to check your satchel, Mr. Neff," she said as we reached a security checkpoint at the beginning of a long dark hallway.

"I'm afraid I can't do that," said David. "The whole point of our visit is to go over the doc.u.ments I have in here, with Riley Trimble. You're welcome to go through it if you like, but I'm sure you'll find no contraband. This was all okayed by your supervisor yesterday."

"Well, I've never allowed reporters through with their equipment."

"Oh," said David. "I see the misunderstanding now. I'm not a reporter. I'm a writer."

"Is there a difference?"

"Yes. Writers get to take their s.h.i.t in there."

Habersham recoiled. The surprise only lasted a split second before it was replaced with cool loathing. "Very well, Mr. Neff. You seem to know your way around. I have priorities of my own to attend to." With that, she walked away.

"Aren't there safety instructions we need to hear?" asked David.

"No," she said, without turning around or slowing her pace. "We only do that for reporters."

"You always did have a way with women," I said.

"Tell me she doesn't remind you of our stepmother," he said.

"A little."

"Well?"

"Well, come on, then, let's go talk to this homicidal maniac."

At the far end of the corridor, a long hallway that smelled of watery diapers, a bald man in a blue jumpsuit sat by himself, staring out at Lake Tappan beyond a wall of gla.s.s. His ankles were cuffed. His left wrist was secured to his chair. He bit at the nails on his free limb. He turned to us as we entered.

Trimble's frame had withered, his body a sh.e.l.l clinging to his skeleton. His veins stuck out from his long neck, like baby snakes wrapped in cheesecloth. There were open sores on his face. His eyes registered no emotion, those black-as-charcoal eyes. He smiled. A large toothy smile full of rivulets of drool.

"David!" he shouted. He tried to get up, but the chains snapped him back into the chair. "David! I'm so glad you came to visit!"

"h.e.l.lo, Riley," said David, sitting in the leather armchair nearest the serial killer.

"My cat told me you were going to come see me soon."

"They let you have pets in here?"

Trimble put a finger to his mouth. "Shhhh."

I took a chair beside David, measuring the man, trying to gauge how much was game and how much was real.

"Riley, another girl is missing," said David.

Trimble laughed loudly. "Not me, not me, Your Honor! Not me! I been locked up tight. You put me here."

"I didn't put you here."

Trimble looked sincerely confused. "No?"

"No, Riley, you did."

"Right!" he said. "Right, right, right." He clapped a hand over his mouth. "Shouldn't have said anything. Mom told me not to. But you tricked me. You ... you trickster, you."

"Doesn't it feel better now that people know? Now that you're not hurting people anymore?"

"It feels better when I take my pills! One pill makes you smaller. One pill makes you tall! Yessir. They got this one, ooooooweee. Rivertin. Good s.h.i.t. Good f.u.c.king s.h.i.t!" He leaned forward in a conspiratorial way. "But they forget to tell you that your p.e.c.k.e.r stops working."

"Riley, I need your help. Do you want to help me? Do you want to help a little girl?"

"A little girl?"

David looked uneasy. If we showed this killer Erin McNight's picture, were we then somehow responsible for what Trimble might do with that information?

"Show me," he said. "Let's see. Is she pretty?"

David looked at me. I knew what he was thinking. I shared his concerns. But we had few leads. It was worth a little risk, wasn't it? I nodded for him to continue.

David opened the satchel and took out Erin's school photo.

"Oh, yes," said Trimble. "Purty. Wow. Nice freckles. Sun-kissed. Love that."

Over the next couple minutes David told Trimble the particulars of the case as we knew them. Trimble listened intently, but never looked up from the picture.

"A serial killer," he said. "You think it's a serial killer. You do. You wouldn't be here if you didn't. So where's the others? Show me more. Don't hold out."

Reluctantly, David fished inside his satchel for the photos of Elaine and Katy.

"Okay, I see. I see. A redhead killer. Did you question Charlie Brown? Ha! I always preferred blondes, you know. The Redhead Killer. Sounds like a book. Are you writing another book, David? Are you out to trick this guy, too?"

"This girl is still missing," said David, pointing to Erin's picture. "She might still be alive. If you help us find her I'll make sure people know you helped. I need you to think about the man who did this. Do you have any idea who took her? Who's been stalking these girls? Did you ever meet anyone out there...?"

Trimble took another look at the batch of photographs. I noticed a look of recognition spread across his face like a wave, and then it was gone, shielded. He'd seen something. Some clue we had missed. Then he turned the photographs around, one by one, and pretended to examine the back.

"Spending a lot of time trying to solve this one, David?" he asked tauntingly. "How long will you keep digging before you give up?"

We both knew the answer was forever. Trimble, it seemed, believed that was a kind of sentence in itself. He smiled at David, handing the pictures back.

"Are you done?" David asked.

"Yes."

"Do you have any ideas? Any theories? Where should we be looking?"

"Why?" asked Trimble. "Are you going to transfer me to some secluded nuthouse on the beach? Why don't you let me out of here?"

"You put yourself here, Riley."

"Of course I did. Of course."

"Are you going to help or not?"

"The problem with you is you were never willing to put yourself in my shoes. Never willing to consider what it felt like to be me. That's a lack of empathy, my friend. A sociopathic tendency."

"I don't want to have sympathy for a serial killer."

"Look at those pictures, tell me what you see."

David flipped through the photographs. "I see girls with red hair. Freckles. I see a man's fetish."

"Now look at them again," said Trimble. "But this time imagine that these girls are not girls, but women, and your only reason for living is to find them and have them. How would you do that? How do you find such specific specimens?"

David considered the picture of Erin for a minute, then put the photos back into his satchel. "I don't want to do that, Riley. I don't even think I can."

"You know you can. That's why you're afraid to try."

"You're not going to help us?"

Trimble smiled. "I've helped you already. But I'm not going to do all the work for you."

I had grown impatient with the games. "Who is it, Trimble?"

For the first time, his gaze turned from David to me. Looking into those dark eyes was like trying to look at negative s.p.a.ce. "Who are you?"

"His name's John McGuffin."

Trimble giggled. "Oh, okay. Right."

"Trimble, tell us what you know," I demanded.

"You know, I was not nearly as obsessed with those girls as you were," he said, turning to David again. "Isn't that ironic? Those girls don't haunt me. They haunt you."

"Come on," said David, standing up.

"Wait!" said Trimble. "How many people have you found who knew each of these girls?"

"A couple," said David. "A handyman. A princ.i.p.al, maybe."

"Then I'll tell you that there's at least one more," he said.

"Who?"

"You're looking but you're not seeing. Let me out of here, David. You could do it. Yes, you could. Let me out and I'll get him for you tonight. Isn't Erin worth that much?"

"Riley, you had yourself committed. All you need to do is walk out the door."

Trimble waved a finger at us. "I know you make them keep me here. All that money from that book goes right to this hospital."

"I don't believe you," said David. "If you knew who took this girl, you'd want to tell us just so we could catch him before he beats your old record. This guy keeps killing and you won't be the most dangerous man in Ohio anymore. You'll just be another dumb criminal who got caught."

For a second Riley opened his mouth to reply, then snapped it shut. He grinned at David. "You and your tricks," he said. "So tricksy, David. But good try."

"He knows who it is. Or at least thinks he does," David said when we were back in the car.

"I disagree. I think he's trying to get a rise out of you. It was a stupid idea. I'm sorry to have pushed you into it."

"You don't know him like I do. He knows something."

"If he does, he's not sharing."

David looked out at the country road rolling beneath the Caddy. "She's dead, you know," he said after a while. "She has to be by now."

"Maybe. Probably."

Just then David's cell phone rang. He answered it and spoke for a couple minutes. I didn't listen to the conversation. I was too preoccupied thinking about Erin McNight's torture at the hands of her faceless abductor. I'd had my hands on him in 1999. If it hadn't been for my bad knee ... I was far too old to go around the block another time. All that risk, that dangerous trip across the wastelands of Cleveland, for what? Katy's life. In exchange for how many others? Slowly, I became aware of David's agitated state. His sentences had become clipped and short. There was concern in his voice. And his eyes were welling up with tears. My first thought was that Tanner had gotten into an accident, and my heart skipped a few beats.

"What?" I asked as he hung up the phone.

"That was my ... that was our mother," he said. "Uncle Ira is dying. He put a shotgun in his mouth this morning. He's on life support at Akron General. And they found a note in his pocket. A letter addressed to us."

EPISODE SIXTEEN.

REVELATION.

The journey felt instantaneous. Like going under to get your wisdom teeth removed. One moment I was drifting off to sleep in 2036, the next I was becoming aware of my consciousness again.

The world was hazy, dark, as if I were looking through thick nylon. I could barely see the control panel set into the egg. The timer attached to my arm beeped like a shrill alarm. I tried to unbuckle the strap with my free hand but discovered my limbs no longer moved. My first thought was that my muscles had atrophied beyond mobility. That would surely mean a slow death inside the egg. I concentrated all my willpower to move that free hand and soon I heard a sickening, tearing sound, the sound of a diaper pulling away from the bottom of a soiled kid who has spent too much time in the sun. I was covered in secretions, a chrysalis made from mucus, s.e.m.e.n, s.h.i.t, blood, urine, wax, mold, hair, tears, old skin, sweat, vomit, and pus. Enshrined. The smell was thick and powerful, even though the scrubbers still churned in their mechanical slots. It smelled something like apples gone to rot over a pile of cow patties, like spoiled cider resting in a forgotten cup inside an outhouse.

I heaved, but, of course, my stomach was empty. The act of heaving brought with it the realization of an overwhelming hunger and thirst. Hunger unlike anything I've experienced. Gnawing hunger, insane hunger.

I am ashamed at what I did next and can only admit to it because I was unable to control myself. I began to eat my way out of the mess. The thick film tasted like crusted snot, dried blood, like scabs. And not everything was hardened, oh, no. Much remained congealed under layers of caked bile, like some h.e.l.lish nougat. I devoured the twisted black crisps that were my fingernails; they pried easily away from the fingers. I worked my way out until my upper body was freed enough so that I could unbelt myself from the timer, though my skin remained covered in a sticky black tar.

The pounding in my temples, that constant drumming of hunger, hunger, hunger, subsided as my body began to digest its leftovers, its first meal in a long d.a.m.n time. With some effort, I found the switch and turned off the machine. There was a gentle shudder and then silence. I felt below, where my satchel had been placed, but the leather had been swallowed up by a slimy white moss. I cut away at the fungus until I could get at the items inside. There it was, the laser cutter. It felt heavy in my hand. Anxious to breathe fresh air, I switched it on. A bright fountain of high-energy sparks erupted from its nose, crackling like a Tesla coil. I brought the end against the top of the egg and went to work, cutting a slash into the hermetically sealed chamber. There was a POP! and a rush of air as it broke through to the outside. I smelled cedar and gra.s.s and water.

Thirty seconds later, the lid was off.

I grabbed the lip of the egg with one hand and then the other. I tried to stand but could not feel my legs. I knew I was not paralyzed, however, because when I kicked a foot against the sh.e.l.l I felt pain: dull and distant, but there. It took some time to roll my body over the opening. I crashed to the earth and, if not for the soft bed of nettles, might have broken something. Slowly, inch by inch, I pulled myself up and leaned against a tree, the laser cutter still in my hand. There was a bright flash of torment as a disc in my spine shifted into place. I cried out, "Ahhhhhhnaaaa!" My voice sounded m.u.f.fled and deep-partially blocked, I figured, by the same black ooze that coated my body.

Movement out of the corner of my eye. A man stepped from behind a tree. Impossible, I thought. Impossible or not, it was the same man who had tried to stop me from entering the time machine in 2036. I recognized him. Although now the man was barely yet a man. He wore no beard and was still skinny from the casual exercise of the young: f.u.c.king and sports. He pointed a gun at me again.