Paper Ghosts_A Novel of Suspense Read online

  I’ve noticed that Lolita keeps her head down around Carl. Today is no exception. As usual, she’s wearing a scarf stamped with pink and white snails. One time, the scarf was tied around her ponytail, another, scrunched through her belt loops. Today it dangles loosely around her neck. I overheard her tell Mrs. T that the scarf was a Christmas gift from her grandfather. She wears it to help him remember who she is.

  Mrs. T and Lolita drift out of the room, chattering, without speaking to us. I hand Carl the pen from my purse, a favorite one with the ink that glides like blue oil.

  “As requested,” I say. “So you will come?” I sound a little more pleading and hopeful than I’d like. Maybe more like a daughter. Maybe that’s good.

  He jams the pen in the waist of his jeans, baring the intimate flash of black hair below his belly button. My heartbeat punches against my throat, harder even than when he pressed his fingers there.

  “Cute girl, cute scarf,” Carl says matter-of-factly. “Did you know the cone snail has enough venom to kill a human being? People call it the Cigarette because once it stings, you have just about enough time to smoke a cigarette before you die.” He pokes me in the ribs. “Oh, come on. Smile. I’ve heard that’s an exaggeration.” Carl pulls his fingers to his lips and pantomimes a drag. “I wonder if Lolita likes to smoke.”

  3

  The first time I saw a photograph of Carl, I felt a sharp sting of the familiar. It was a partial view, an artsy portrait shot in half-shadow. I had a feeling I knew him from somewhere. Still do. When I concentrate, it’s like searching for the name of a bit character in a book I read years ago or trying to latch on to a genetic memory. And yet it is a defiant reason I’m so sure Carl is the one.

  It’s been two more visits, and Carl hasn’t said yes to going with me. He is crawling around in my head all the time now. Waking me up. At night, alone in my bedroom, I feel his fingers roaming my body, searching for pulse points.

  Now fury pounds my chest, the same insistent rush I’d felt on the way over today. Our bodies are slanted in battered Adirondack chairs in Mrs. T’s dirt backyard. In the corner, there’s a ragged patch of garden where Carl eagerly told me three cats and a squirrel are buried. Honeysuckle and vines creep wildly out of control up the sturdy ten-foot fence, fusing a thick cage.

  “I don’t see a thing in this so-called vacation for me,” Carl is complaining. “You could be a lunatic. The female lioness does ninety percent of the hunting. Learned that yesterday on Nat Geo. I have to give it to Mrs. T, she doesn’t skimp on cable.” He’s sucking at the straw of the Big Gulp I concocted at his request: one-third Sprite, one-third cherry Coke, one-third Dr Pepper.

  In that instant, I decide on a new script. I manage to keep my voice low so it stops before it reaches the shuttered windows of the house. “I need to know.”

  Carl calmly tugs a square of yellow paper out of his pocket and begins to unfold it. “I want to hear you say it.”

  “I need to know if you’re a killer. As your daughter, I need to know what kind of blood runs in my veins. You owe it to me.” The first and last line, at least, are true.

  “That wasn’t so hard, was it? So we’re clear this trip isn’t about bonding or breathing fresh air. If you were really my daughter, you would have told me that from the start. You would have talked about how you don’t want your babies to be killers. You would have cried big tears. And you would have gotten out of here just as fast as you could. That’s what normal girls do.”

  I open my mouth to disagree and close it. Carl is right. I am not a normal girl. He is being extremely lucid for a change. I don’t want to interrupt.

  “Just so you know, this is an exercise in madness,” he continues. “I can’t remember. Every now and then, a cop drops by here to be sure. He thinks I’m giving him shit. If he can’t break into my head, how do you think you can?”

  What cop? Someone I know? For a second, I feel another man’s fingers.

  “I have a plan to help you remember,” I wheedle. “Places. Photographs. Don’t you want to know?”

  “Why would I want to know? You’re much prettier than that cop, though. A lioness on the hunt.”

  On the wide arm of his chair, he’s smoothing out the wrinkled yellow paper he pulled from his pocket. I can’t make out the words from here, just that he’s been putting my blue pen to work. Then he holds the paper in front of his face like an earnest child. It shakes ever so slightly even though the air is hot and still.

  When Carl begins to read, I realize he’s been planning to go with me all along.

  He’s naming conditions—all the things he wants in return for getting in the car.

  Sweet tea every day like his dead grandmother made.

  Books.

  A shovel.

  It’s a fairly long list. I stop listening about halfway through and start thinking about the next step—cajoling Mrs. T into springing Carl, which I’ve hinted at. I’ve told her my birth certificate says “unknown” for the father—that I found him through a DNA match. I’m hoping she won’t ask for paperwork again.

  When he finishes reading, Carl says magnanimously: “Don’t feel like you have to get this stuff before we hit the road.”

  He folds up the paper neatly and tucks it back in his jeans. “You’re an odd little duck. Emphasis on little. And odd. I wonder why you don’t seem worried that I’m going to kill you, too.”

  4

  I’m dizzy with hope. He’s finally packing to go with me. Perfect T-shirt squares. Socks balled into a plastic bag. Borderline obsessive-compulsive, claimed two psychiatric reports. Carl adds one pair of sweats, two pairs of pajama bottoms.

  The drawers in this narrow blue room are hanging empty; the closet, a skeleton of bare hangers. He’s packing every item of clothing he brought when he was dismissed to this hell of last resort, and they won’t even fill up a suitcase.

  Where is his stuff? Right after the trial, after he was acquitted, when he sold his house and disappeared for years, there were rumors he kept a secret place, the proverbial cabin in the woods. It was hinted at between the lines of a glossy magazine spread on Carl titled “Darkroom,” which I thought was a spot-on headline for a documentary photographer who was a suspected serial killer.

  Mrs. T is watching with me from the door, arms crossed, a disapproving sergeant in a fading apron. It took a week, but I convinced her. She’d bargained me down to ten days instead of fourteen.

  “You’re still sure about this, right?” Mrs. T says, interrupting my thoughts. That’s what she likes to be called, tired of people mangling her consonant-riddled Polish surname.

  More than once, she has reminded me how brave she is to give refuge to outcasts and criminals “as Christ commanded.” I despised her until the day two weeks ago I passed by a bedroom and saw her hugging the lady with the veil. Mrs. T was reassuring her. Your man will make it back from the war in time for your wedding.

  “It will be fine,” I say to Mrs. T.

  “Ten days is longer than you think. I can’t say it enough. You have to keep up with his meds. He gets these tremors sometimes but other times he’s just fine.” She gestures to the pharmacy in the Ziploc bag in my hand. “He’ll lie, you know. Forget. It’s not good when he forgets. You saw it yourself last week. How old are you again? You don’t look the right age to be his daughter. A little too young. Are you nineteen? Twenty? If I do that math, it ain’t going to add up.”

  So, I say silently. Stop me. Someone probably should.

  “…but I’m putting my trust in you because you seem like your heart’s in the right place. Just don’t forget our deal. I cut you slack on the red tape. I don’t want to be cut short for the days you’ve got him if he’s not here when that tight-ass from the state does her little monthly bed check. I don’t get enough money as it is. The state must think halfway house means I deserve half as much.” She likes this line of hers. Wears the same smirk every time she says it.

  “…what they don’t realize is, tending
to six half-crazies is like having twelve. Half their head is still sharp as the devil, making plans to sneak out for donuts and tequila. The other half is time-travelin’ to God knows where. It can get real busy around here. Right, Mr. Feldman?”

  I keep silent throughout her speech, because I’ve heard it a few times. Carl is curling up his Christmas tie and tucking it in a corner near the underwear. I’m relieved it’s not around his neck. Better if nothing attracts attention.

  An hour ago, when he thought I was busy with his landlady, I had watched him carefully through the kitchen window as he buried his ten-pound weights in that untended garden out back. I don’t know what has happened to his other treasures. I will deal with them later.

  The knife that could cut skin like paper and spill the strawberry syrup. The long red rubber band that could choke. The lighter with the N that still fires. I had stared into its flame before I put it back.

  The photograph of the girl in the desert that makes my mouth dry.

  “Don’t know what y’all expect to do on this little family bonding trip,” Mrs. T says, “but don’t expect some hallelujah father-daughter moment. Neither of you.”

  “Has he had a violent episode here?” He’s only six feet away. I want him to hear me. Violent wasn’t on any of Mrs. T’s daily reports, at least the ones she let me see.

  She tugs me into the hallway. “You said you already know all about his history.” Her face works for a few seconds. “Here’s the deal. My nephew’s paying me to rent his room through the rest of this month.”

  That answers my little worry about the cop showing up to see Carl while we’re gone. If this cop exists, Mrs. T has her own reasons to keep him away.

  She’s working the angles. Concerned that I’ll back out. I’ve nosed around. Where does the money go, Mrs. T? Certainly not into the sticks of Goodwill furniture, the pantry of pork and beans and generic-brand peanut butter, the two bathrooms with corroding handicapped bars and Reader’s Digest stories taped on the wall.

  Only the locks on the doors and the medicine cabinets are gleaming and solid. The TV is the newest equipment in the place, but it’s an off brand, on duty fourteen hours a day, already signaling its death with that relentless buzz. I want to report her but that could backfire. I plan to slip into her life, and out.

  And where would the woman with the veil go? Who would hug her?

  “He’s coming with me,” I assure her. “I just would like to know if he’s attacked anyone since he’s been here.”

  “Depends what you mean. I lower my standards for this crowd. Not everything gets reported, you know? And Carl here, he don’t get antagonized much. My residents got a sense not to mess with him. They don’t like his weird friends.” She chuckles.

  I’m thrown again. Mrs. T and Carl haven’t mentioned any friends visiting before. Will someone else miss him? I can’t think about that now.

  Carl is pulling something metal and shiny from under his pillow. It’s disappearing into the suitcase.

  He snaps the case shut. “I’m ready.” He’s wearing Levi’s, a tucked-in blue work shirt, a worn leather belt, and those finger-crushing boots. The nicest things he owns, which I know because I tried to search every inch of his space. The effort he’s made today on a public appearance both scares and tugs at me.

  He’s not hiding it. He’s looking forward to this.

  I’ve prepared myself as much as I can.

  “Last day of the month at the outset,” Mrs. T repeats. “That’s when he needs to be all tucked in.” She turns to speak directly to him. “Mr. Feldman, don’t get any fancy ideas about freedom. This will be your first and last vacation from Mrs. T’s bed-and-breakfast.”

  She escorts us to the door. A conga line of ex-criminals is waiting, two men and three women. One wedding veil, one Cubs baseball cap, two pink fuzzy slippers, one bare chest, one aloha shirt with palm trees. Two murderers, one arsonist, one child molester, one rapist. All diagnosed with dementia and a pre-existing tendency to snap. I researched their trials on the Internet, called up social workers, gossiped with a late-night, tipsy Mrs. T.

  Pink Slippers is the nicest. She shot her son-in-law five days after he violently raped her daughter. By the time she got out of prison at seventy-four, her daughter was dead. No one was around to step in and knock off the next brute she married.

  Mrs. T leans in, her breath licking my ear. “He’s going to want a camera. You don’t need me to tell you that’s a bad damn idea. For emergencies, don’t forget the bottle with the red mark on the lid. Say hi to Florida.” She shuts the door on us firmly. Done.

  Endless aqua sea. Salt in my mouth, on my skin. No clocks.

  Except that’s not where we’re going, and Carl knows it.

  He’s already fifty feet ahead of me, whistling in appreciation at the black Buick parked by the curb. I don’t tell him it’s a rental, or that we’ll be dumping it. There will be no part of me he will ever be able to hunt down. When this is over, I will be one of the million feathers in his brain he can’t catch.

  I pop up the trunk and move to take the suitcase out of his hand. He ignores me, lifts it easily, and tosses it inside. Slams the trunk. I’m not surprised. He is strong. Already, he seems taller, more substantial. Mrs. T marked him at 5'11" on her admittance form. The old police reports said 6'3". Both listed a birthdate that makes him sixty-two years old next Thursday.

  He pulls open the door to the backseat and glances back at Mrs. T’s prison, a two-story Victorian with gray paint peeling like fish scales. The houses on either side stand like abandoned carcasses, fish bones licked clean.

  In an upstairs window, one of the shutters moves.

  Carl delivers a jaunty two-finger salute in return.

  Significant paralysis in the left arm. I was counting on those words, typed with such officialdom and clarity on one of the reports. Except Carl just saluted, no problem, with his left hand. Until now, he’s never lifted anything but his right hand in my presence, the one he’s using now to hold open the door to the backseat.

  I walk over, shove the door closed, and yank the handle on the front passenger side. “Not the backseat. You’re riding shotgun. Up here.” I almost add Dad. Up here, Dad.

  “Just bein’ polite,” he says.

  He slides into the seat. Rolls down the window. Grins at its fluid silence. Rolls it up. Rolls it down. Tasting freedom.

  He lays the familiar yellow piece of paper on the console. “My list of conditions. In case you forget.”

  “I won’t forget.”

  I thrust the car in gear. I’ve spent half my life getting ready for Carl. I’m suddenly terrified ten days isn’t going to be enough.

  5

  Rachel was lying to my mother.

  “I already said we won’t leave the house.” Each word, taut with fury.

  My sister was imprisoned because of me, missing a birthday sleepover, ordered to babysit so my parents could attend the wedding of a twice-divorced friend.

  A storm was predicted.

  When my parents left, the sky was still clear and light.

  As soon as she tied on her most battered Nikes, I knew where Rachel wanted to go—a culvert in a nearby creek bed that she liked to explore. You had to traverse a row of fourteen stones jutting out of the water to get to the mouth of the dark tunnel where random treasures floated in and got stuck. An old bottle, a silver ring, once even a soggy coin purse with fifty-two dollar bills.

  We were halfway down the incline, rain slashing the creek, when the anger drained out of Rachel. “This is a mistake. We’re turning around.”

  That’s when we heard the yell. And another. A hundred yards below, I could make out a small boy standing in the mouth of the culvert, waving his arms. The rain was falling in sheets now, the creek at a frothy boil. The water in the man-made cave, normally just an inch or two of muck, was already halfway up to his knees. The boy seemed too scared to cross the creek to solid ground.

  Rachel gripped me possessively by
the shoulder. No one could sense my fear like she could. “Wait here. Do not move. Do you hear me? I will never, ever let anything happen to you.”

  She was at the water’s edge before I could beg her to stop. I didn’t move. I couldn’t take my eyes off Rachel as she performed a dangerous ballet, leaping from stone to stone. Except the stones had disappeared, swallowed by rising water. Rachel was jumping from memory.

  I’m sure it was only a few minutes before she led the boy across the creek. It felt like forever. He fell off a stone at one point, and they waded the rest of the way, the water up to the boy’s neck.

  The three of us climbed back up the embankment, soaked and silent, Rachel in the middle holding our hands. We dropped the boy off at his house about two blocks from there, not knowing what story he’d tell. He hugged Rachel goodbye. I don’t remember ever seeing him again.

  Rachel and I kept that night a secret. We’d gotten home well before my parents. She had immediately thrown me in the shower, made me cocoa, helped me slip on one of her soft T-shirts and into smooth sheets.

  “Are you awake?” I whispered later into the gap between our beds. “Yes,” Rachel replied sleepily. “What is it?”

  “I thought you were going to die. Please don’t die.” A sticky sob emerged from my throat. Rachel slipped into my bed and wrapped her arms around me. I still feel the imprint of her body at my back when I curl up.

  Maybe every child has a story like this, where something really terrible almost happened. Maybe the water wasn’t rushing as fast, the space between the stones wasn’t as great, the danger to Rachel not as imminent.