daughter, the friendly, slightly chubby girl who once nursed equal passions for Heath Ledger and Heath Bar Crunch and had been Veda’s guardian and daytime companion for the last year and a half. The grief that she anticipates is still too deeply submersed in shock to make itself known.
“There’s a blanket in the backseat,” the voice says. “If you don’t want to look at her like that. I wouldn’t blame you. Death is pretty darn ugly, isn’t it?”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck me ? You’re getting downright feisty, Susan. Maybe it’s time for me to wake up your daughter so you can hear her scream again. What do you think?”
“No,” Sue says, “no, no. I’m sorry. I won’t—I shouldn’t have said that.” And despite what has just happened to Marilyn, right now all she feels is relief at the notion of Veda sound asleep through all of this. It is an irresistibly alluring thought.
“Get in the car.”
Sue climbs in with the phone still pressed to her ear, takes the blanket from the backseat, and with her right hand spreads it clumsily over Marilyn’s lap. Now she does cry a little bit, but silently, sparingly, like a few droplets of condensation leaking out from a high-pressure valve.
“Look at the note that I left you.”
“I saw it.”
“Look again.”
Sue makes herself look at the bloody message stuck to Marilyn’s chest. The sheet of paper that it’s written on is actually a map, and when she looks more closely she realizes that it’s a map of eastern Massachusetts. It starts just west of Worcester and covers the state line right to the coast. The ragged edge of the map would seem to indicate that it had been torn out of a spiral-bound road atlas.
“What is this?”
“This is your route for the rest of the night,” the voice says. “Are you ready to ride, Susan?”
10:38P.M.
Sue peels the map from Marilyn’s chest and lays it on the dashboard. Above the wordPUNISHED she can see that a route has been highlighted in careful yellow marker, the lines ruled into an upand-down zigzag pattern across northern Massachusetts beneath the New Hampshire border.
On first glance the route defies logic. It is made up of a combination of country roads, grinding its way in a general northeastern direction from Gray Haven toward the coast. It is by no means direct—rather, it wobbles and bobs erratically through an apparently nonsensical symphony of detours, as if someone were following a bumblebee overland, back to its hive.
The only thing that lends any degree of order to the route is the string of small northern towns that it connects, none of them large enough to warrant red letters on the map. There are seven of these towns strung together by this jagged yellow NASDAQ line, starting with Gray Haven. From there the line meanders through communities named, in order from west to east: Winslow, Stoneview, Ashford, Wickham, and East Newbury before ending at someplace called White’s Cove, which perches on Cape Ann just west of Pigeon Cove.
Sue has never heard of any of these towns before, despite the fact that she’s lived in Massachusetts most of her life. She certainly can’t remember ever seeing any of them on a map. Of course there are literally hundreds of crappy little burgs scattered throughout New England that no amount of regional familiarity could possibly make her aware of, but it’s somehow unsettling just the same.
Although let’s face it, that might be due to the partially draped corpse of her nanny in the passenger seat, not to mention the stinking, Glad bag–draped thing stowed in the back.
“You’ve got your route laid out for you,” the voice on the phone says. “You’ve got your cargo in the back and you’ve got nine hours of night left. If you get started now you should be back in White’s Cove by seven thirtyA.M . tomorrow.”
Instinctively Sue’s eyes go to the fuel gauge. Thank God she filled the tank after leaving work.
“Why do you
“There’s a blanket in the backseat,” the voice says. “If you don’t want to look at her like that. I wouldn’t blame you. Death is pretty darn ugly, isn’t it?”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck me ? You’re getting downright feisty, Susan. Maybe it’s time for me to wake up your daughter so you can hear her scream again. What do you think?”
“No,” Sue says, “no, no. I’m sorry. I won’t—I shouldn’t have said that.” And despite what has just happened to Marilyn, right now all she feels is relief at the notion of Veda sound asleep through all of this. It is an irresistibly alluring thought.
“Get in the car.”
Sue climbs in with the phone still pressed to her ear, takes the blanket from the backseat, and with her right hand spreads it clumsily over Marilyn’s lap. Now she does cry a little bit, but silently, sparingly, like a few droplets of condensation leaking out from a high-pressure valve.
“Look at the note that I left you.”
“I saw it.”
“Look again.”
Sue makes herself look at the bloody message stuck to Marilyn’s chest. The sheet of paper that it’s written on is actually a map, and when she looks more closely she realizes that it’s a map of eastern Massachusetts. It starts just west of Worcester and covers the state line right to the coast. The ragged edge of the map would seem to indicate that it had been torn out of a spiral-bound road atlas.
“What is this?”
“This is your route for the rest of the night,” the voice says. “Are you ready to ride, Susan?”
10:38P.M.
Sue peels the map from Marilyn’s chest and lays it on the dashboard. Above the wordPUNISHED she can see that a route has been highlighted in careful yellow marker, the lines ruled into an upand-down zigzag pattern across northern Massachusetts beneath the New Hampshire border.
On first glance the route defies logic. It is made up of a combination of country roads, grinding its way in a general northeastern direction from Gray Haven toward the coast. It is by no means direct—rather, it wobbles and bobs erratically through an apparently nonsensical symphony of detours, as if someone were following a bumblebee overland, back to its hive.
The only thing that lends any degree of order to the route is the string of small northern towns that it connects, none of them large enough to warrant red letters on the map. There are seven of these towns strung together by this jagged yellow NASDAQ line, starting with Gray Haven. From there the line meanders through communities named, in order from west to east: Winslow, Stoneview, Ashford, Wickham, and East Newbury before ending at someplace called White’s Cove, which perches on Cape Ann just west of Pigeon Cove.
Sue has never heard of any of these towns before, despite the fact that she’s lived in Massachusetts most of her life. She certainly can’t remember ever seeing any of them on a map. Of course there are literally hundreds of crappy little burgs scattered throughout New England that no amount of regional familiarity could possibly make her aware of, but it’s somehow unsettling just the same.
Although let’s face it, that might be due to the partially draped corpse of her nanny in the passenger seat, not to mention the stinking, Glad bag–draped thing stowed in the back.
“You’ve got your route laid out for you,” the voice on the phone says. “You’ve got your cargo in the back and you’ve got nine hours of night left. If you get started now you should be back in White’s Cove by seven thirtyA.M . tomorrow.”
Instinctively Sue’s eyes go to the fuel gauge. Thank God she filled the tank after leaving work.
“Why do you
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