Riptide Page 2

  “We’ll get to that. Now, you didn’t want to speak with me?”

  “I’m sure you’re a very nice man, but no, I don’t need to speak to you, at least not professionally.”

  “The police officers aren’t certain about that, Ms. Matlock. Now, why don’t you tell me, in your own words, a bit about yourself and exactly when this stalker first came to your attention.”

  Yet again, she thought. Her voice was flat because she’d said the same words so many times. Hard to feel anything saying them now. “I’m a senior speechwriter for Governor Bledsoe. I live in a very nice condominium on Oak Street in Albany. Two and a half weeks ago, I got the first phone call. No heavy breathing, no profanity, nothing like that. He just said he’d seen me running in the park, and he wanted to get to know me. He wouldn’t tell me who he was. He said I would come to know him very well. He said he wanted to be my boyfriend. I told him to leave me alone and hung up.”

  “Did you tell any friends or the governor about the call?”

  “Not until after he called me another two times. That’s when he told me to stop sleeping with the governor. He said he was my boyfriend, and I wasn’t going to sleep with any other man. In a very calm voice, he said that if I didn’t stop sleeping with the governor, he’d just have to kill him. Naturally, when I told the governor about this, everyone licensed to carry a gun within a ten-mile radius was on it.”

  He didn’t even crack a smile, just kept staring at her.

  Becca found she really didn’t care. She said, “They tapped my phone immediately, but somehow he knew they had. They couldn’t find him. They said he was using some sort of electronic scrambler that kept giving out fake locations.”

  “And are you sleeping with Governor Bledsoe, Ms. Matlock?”

  She’d heard that question a good dozen times, too, over and over, especially from Detective Gordon. She even managed a smile. “Actually, no. I don’t suppose you’ve noticed, but he is old enough to be my father.”

  “We had a president old enough to be your father and a woman even younger than you are and neither of them had a problem with that concept.”

  She wondered if Governor Bledsoe could ever survive a Monica and almost smiled. She just shrugged.

  “So, Ms. Matlock, are you sleeping with the governor?”

  She’d discovered that at the mention of sex, everyone —media folk, cops, friends—homed right in on it. It still offended her, but she had answered the question so often the edge was off now. She shrugged again, seeing that it bothered him, and said, “No, I haven’t slept with Governor Bledsoe. I have never wanted to sleep with Governor Bledsoe. I write speeches for him, really fine speeches. I don’t sleep with him. I even occasionally write speeches for Mrs. Bledsoe. I don’t sleep with her, either.

  “Now, I have no clue why the man believes that I am having sex with the governor. I have no clue why he would care if I were. Why did he pull the governor, of all people, out of the hat? Because I spend time with him? Because he’s powerful? I just don’t know. The Albany police haven’t found out anything about this man yet. However, they didn’t think I was a liar, not like the police here in New York. I even met with a police psychologist, who gave me advice on how to handle him when he called.”

  “Actually, Ms. Matlock, the Albany police do believe you are a liar. At first they didn’t, but that’s what they believe now. But do go on.”

  Just like that? He said everyone believed she was a liar and she was just to go on? “What do you mean?” she said slowly. “They never gave me that impression.”

  “That’s why our detectives finally sent you to me. They spoke to their counterparts in Albany. No one could discover any stalker. They believed you were disturbed about something. Perhaps you had a crush on the governor and this was your way of getting him to acknowledge you.”

  “Ah, I see. I have, perhaps, a fatal attraction.”

  “No, certainly not. You shouldn’t have referred to it like that. It’s much too soon.”

  “Too soon for what? I’m still trying to get the hang of it?”

  Anger flashed in his eyes. It made her feel good. “Just go on, Ms. Matlock. No, don’t argue with me yet. First tell me more. I need to understand. Then we can determine what’s going on, together.”

  In his dreams, she thought. A crush on the governor? Yeah, right. What a joke that was. Bledsoe was a man who would sleep with a nun if he could get under her habit. He made Bill Clinton look as upstanding as Eisenhower, or had Ike had a mistress, too? Men and power—the two always seemed to go with illicit sex. As for Bledsoe, he’d been very lucky thus far, he hadn’t yet run into an intern as voracious as Monica, one who wouldn’t just fade into the woodwork when he was done with her.

  “Very well,” she said. “I came to New York to escape that maniac. I was—I am—terrified of him and what he’ll do. Also, my mother lives here and she’s very ill. I wanted to be with her.”

  “You’re staying in her apartment, is that right?”

  “Yes. She’s in Lenox Hill Hospital.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  Becca looked at him and tried to say the words. They wouldn’t come out. She cleared her throat and finally managed to say, “She’s dying of uterine cancer.”

  “I’m sorry. You say this man followed you here to New York?”

  Becca nodded. “I saw him here for the first time just after I arrived in New York, on Madison near Fiftieth, weaving in and out of people to my right. He was wearing a blue windbreaker and a baseball cap. How do I know it was him? I can’t be specific about that. I just know. Deep down, I recognized that it was him. He knew I saw him, I’m sure of that. Unfortunately I couldn’t see him clearly enough to give more than a general impression of what he looks like.”

  “And that is?”

  “He’s tall, slender. Is he young? I just don’t know. The baseball cap covered his hair and he was wearing aviator glasses, very dark, opaque. He was wearing generic jeans and that blue windbreaker that was very loose.” She paused a moment. “I’ve told the police all of this, many times. Why do you care?”

  His look said it all. He wanted to see just how specific, just how detailed her descriptions were, how much she’d embellished her fantasy man. And all of the marvelous particulars were from her imagination, her very sick imagination.

  She kept it together. When he hesitated, she said mildly, “He ducked away when I turned toward him. Then the phone calls started again. I know he’s keeping close tabs on me. He seems to know exactly where I am and what I’m doing. I can feel him, you know?”

  “You told the officers that he wouldn’t tell you what he wanted.”

  “No, not really, other than to tell me if I didn’t stop having sex with the governor, he would kill him. I asked him why he’d do that and he just said he didn’t want me to have sex with any other man, that he was my boyfriend. But it sounded funny, like it was just something he was saying, not something he really meant. So why is he doing this, really? I don’t know. I will be frank with you, Dr. Burnett. I’m not crazy, I’m terrified. If that’s his aim, he’s certainly succeeded. I simply don’t understand why the police think I’m the bad guy here, that I’m making all of this up for some crazy reason. Perhaps you could believe me now?”

  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 running down the long dingy hallway.

  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.

  “Go home and get some sleep, Becca,” the nurse said, her voice quiet and calm. “I’ll keep watch. Go get some sleep.”

  There’s no one else in the world for me, Becca thought, as she walked away from Lenox Hill Hospital. I’ll be alone when Mom dies.

  Her mother died that night. She just drifted away, the doctor told her, no pain, no awareness of death. An easy passing. Ten minutes after the call, the phone rang again.

  This time she didn’t pick it up. She put her mother’s apartment on the market the following day, spent the night in a hotel under an assumed name, and made all the funeral arrangements from there. She called her mother’s friends to invite them to the small, private service.

  A day and a half later, Becca threw the first clot of rich, dark earth over her mother’s coffin. She watched as the black dirt mixed with the deep red roses on top of the coffin. She didn’t cry, but all of her mother’s friends were quietly weeping. She accepted a hug from each of them. It was still very hot in New York, too hot for the middle of June.

  When she returned to her hotel room the phone was ringing. Without thinking, she picked it up.

  “You tried to ge
t away from me, Rebecca. I don’t like that.”

  She’d had it. She’d been pushed too hard. Her mother was dead, there was nothing to stay her hand. “I nearly caught you the other day, at One Police Plaza, you pathetic coward. You jerk, did you wonder what I was doing there? I was blowing the whistle on you, you murderer. Yeah, I saw you, all right. You had on that ridiculous baseball cap and that dark blue sweatshirt. Next time I’ll get you and then I’ll shoot you right between your crazy eyes.”

  “It’s you the cops think is crazy. I’m not even a blip on their radar. Hey, I don’t even exist.” His voice grew deeper, harder. “Stop sleeping with the governor or I’ll kill him just like I did that stupid old bag lady. I’ve told you that over and over but you haven’t listened to me. I know he’s visited you in New York. Everyone knows it. Stop sleeping with him.”

  She started laughing and couldn’t seem to stop. She did only when he began yelling at her, calling her a whore, a stupid bitch, and more curses, some of them extraordinarily vicious.

  She hiccuped. “Sleep with the governor? Are you nuts? He’s married. He has three children, two of them older than I am.” And then, because it no longer mattered, because he might not really exist anyway, she said, “The governor sleeps with every woman he can talk into that private room off his office. I’d have to take a number. You want them all to stop sleeping with him? It’ll keep you busy until the next century and that’s a very long time away.”

  “It’s just you, Rebecca. You’ve got to stop sleeping with him.”

  “Listen to me, you stupid jerk. I would only sleep with the governor if world peace were in the balance. Even then it would be a very close call.”

  The creep actually sighed. “Don’t lie, Rebecca. Just stop, do you hear me?”

  “I can’t stop something I’ve never even done.”

  “It’s a shame,” he said, and for the first time, he hung up on her.

  That night the governor was shot through the neck outside the Hilton Hotel, where he was attending a fundraiser for cancer research. He was lucky. There were more than a hundred doctors around. They managed to save his life. It was reported that the bullet was fired from a great distance, by a marksman with remarkable skill. They had no leads as yet.