Chapter 46
ABBY
I started with the office. Through the closed window, my phone light swept over left-behind objects, lengthening their shadows.
Stacks of books were lined up against the wall.
The desk was still there, too, topped with miscellaneous items. I never thought a hole puncher would give me hope, but this one did.
I needed proof that Curtis had left in a hurry, too busy to empty those desk drawers.
Somewhere there could be an envelope from his father, a printout of an air itinerary.
Anything with an address or a destination.
Anything to stop me from heading the wrong direction.
I squatted and looked around for anything big and hard enough to break a window, but I couldn’t find a single rock, only thick, luxuriant grass.
I slapped a mosquito on my neck and felt the wetness on my fingers, just a squishy touch.
It was enough to make me grimace. I was a wuss.
No tolerance for even a little blood or violence of any kind. But was that true?
With mosquitoes feasting on my bare ankles, I felt my body filling with hatred—like it was flowing through my veins, pumping into my muscles, preparing them for action.
The sane part of me said I should breathe deeply—let it all flow back out.
Find calm. But I didn’t want to find calm.
I wanted to find Curtis and face him. And then I wanted to bring back my boy.
I pushed on the window and it slid to one side, so effortlessly it almost made me laugh. Of course he’d leave the windows unlocked. What did he ever have to fear? This was a posh community, and he was a man.
The screen popped off easily. I jumped up and wiggled inside, scraping my leg across the sill and landing inside with an awkward grunt.
In seconds, my elation soured. One drawer and the next—empty or almost, save for some paper clips and loose change.
I swept a hand through the deepest drawer and managed only to press my thumb against a tack.
Swearing, I knelt down, sucking the sore spot.
There, under the desk, was the dictation machine, still connected by a long cord to a spindly headset.
I aimed my phone light and saw a microcassette tape, still inside.
I popped it out to take a look. No label, but it had to be recent.
It wasn’t what I’d come for, but I’d take anything that gave me a sense of control over my secrets, which were never meant to be in his hands.
But what if Curtis had recorded sessions after mine?
A small box of twenty or more tapes was farther under the desk.
I couldn’t fit them all in my pockets. I didn’t want to leave any sure sign I’d stolen something.
One missing tape could be overlooked, but a whole box?
My phone lit up with a text from Robert. I covered it quickly with my hand, not wanting the glare to fill up the room.
I found the address. Father is a doc who closed his practice a few years ago. Retired now. I know a cop in the area who will be on duty starting 6 a.m. Friend of a friend. I can ask him to do a drive-by.
The relief poured through me. I typed Thanks. I considered adding a heart, but I pressed Send instead.
Robert followed up: My advice we don’t make a scene. You know how Benjamin will react if we came up there no reason or do anything in a panic.
It was nearly over, then. We’d wait for the cop’s report, then drive up by midmorning and pretend we were in the area, just sightseeing and checking in. Robert had found Curtis, or at least Curtis’s father. Things were going to be okay.
I didn’t need scraps of paper after all, but I didn’t regret breaking and entering. My glance fell on the dictation machine again. I had time.
Crouched under the desk, I reinserted the tape and started listening to the words I’d already read in the transcript.
From the very start, my slurred voice surprised me.
I sounded drunk. Not hypnotized. Drunk, or drugged from that tea he’d encouraged me to drink, to calm me down, of course.
Even Benjamin had noticed I came out of Curtis’s office a little loopy.
No wonder I’d felt so weird later that night, all the way through making dinner.
The tape captured the halting quality of my words and the lengthening gaps between them, as Curtis barely acknowledged my soft and senseless rambling.
And then our voices stopped. It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes into the session.
I forwarded a little. Forwarded again. The only sound was a dry hiss of moving tape and Curtis’s occasional throat clearing.
He’d kept recording. Another fast-forward.
Nothing. I flipped the thirty-minute tape over and pressed Play again.
Nothing and nothing and nothing, until finally, my startled voice, as I woke at the end of the hour: Do we need to start over?
No, Curtis had told me. Our time is up.
I stared at the tiny white reels, coming to a sudden stop. The tape was done.
But where were all those parts where I talked about the half-naked girl I’d seen jump out of the car? Where was the accident in horrific detail? Where were my shameful, remorseless confessions?
I briefly considered whether Curtis had simply recorded over them, exchanging my problematic confession for white noise. But the throat clearing proved it wasn’t so. He’d kept recording.
There was only one possibility left. I hadn’t said most of the things in that transcript.
I pulled out the tape, staring at it, the magnitude paralyzing for a moment. Who would do that?
It’s what I’d asked of myself after reading the transcript, but now the question doubled back on itself. Who would defraud a patient into thinking she’d seen and heard things that never happened?
A few details were there—things I’d told Curtis at the start of the session, other moments he could have gleaned from Ewan.
But most of it was invention. He didn’t bother to implant a false memory during the session itself.
He didn’t even bother with conventional hypnosis.
He just drugged me into submission and then wrote utter falsehoods into the transcript, knowing I’d believe them.
I crawled out of the window, came around the office, and continued toward the front of the darkened main house.
I tried the front door—locked. And several windows—but most of them were picture windows, and the only one that looked possible to slide open was high above my head.
Every room inside looked empty, as best I could tell in the dim light.
I had nearly circled the house when my eye fell on a large tarp-covered object in the back yard.
Riding lawn mower? Immense pile of firewood?
When I got close enough, I saw it was a vehicle supported by several tire jacks, the wheels completely removed. That was a lot of trouble to go through in order to store a car in summertime, especially if Curtis would be coming back to retrieve it soon.
The tarp was fastened down on all sides by a web of bungee cords.
I unhooked two from the rear of the SUV, spotting the removal of the back plates, and worked my way around the front, panning with my phone light until I stopped.
The front of the car was buckled. Grill dented, front edge of the hood curled back like a lip, sneering.
My mind searched for the last time I’d seen the SUV. I could picture it shooting past—the car a white blur, disappearing around the house, the one and only time Curtis was late for one of Benjamin’s appointments. I could see him moments later, face shiny, pushing back his dark hair.
That’s when I’d driven from his place to a café, the same place I’d gotten the call from Willa about Christopher Weber, who had died sometime before dawn, hit by a driver who was never found. The accident hadn’t surprised Curtis at all. He was smug. Weber was reckless. Maybe he pissed someone off.
What had the police said? Something about the tires and the car color being common. Curtis’s SUV was white. Tires, missing.
I stared at the crumpled bumper, making space in my mind for this new thing.
Bigger than the microcassette tape, which mattered only to me.
Bigger than any of the wild speculations I had half indulged, still trying to keep open the possibility that Curtis could be surrounded by death without any of it being his fault.
And if it was his fault?
You didn’t crash into the car of a former patient on a backcountry road several hours away by accident.
You had to hunt that person, first. You had to be arrogant enough to believe that you’d get away with it, no matter the evidence left behind.
Tire tracks. Paint chips. And if you could get away with such a thing you were probably both lucky and smart, smarter than the man you wanted to kill, even if he was a killer and a psychopath.
I startled at the buzzy call of some night bird, coming from behind me, in the woods that surrounded Grove Academy. Just through those trees, the school was so close.
Harper, I thought, picturing her as I’d seen her in the school portrait—awkward, spotty, and so very young.
Stupid and impulsive.
I remembered the expression on Curtis’s face when he said those words. Impulsivity was what he hated most in his failed clients. The thing he would hate the most in himself if one time—a time of strong desires only recently unbottled—he gave in and did something rash.
Harper McKibben.
Too close to home. Broad daylight. No witnesses, but still, what a risk.
Harper McKibben was picked up in Lake Forest. She was disposed of in a ravine two miles from Lake Forest.
Too close too close too close.