ZURICH
Elizabeth hadn’t slept for three days.
Last night she had managed no more than a two-hour doze, plagued by nightmares. She saw Hans’s hands snaking out from beneath wet, heavy soil, his hands caked with mud. She heard him in her kitchen, making them breakfast. She saw him lying in a web of pain, writhing in agony as the net bucked and some hideous arachnid with steel mandibles rushed to enfold him. She had never dreamt anything so frightening, and after a certain point, sleep was no longer an option. To ease the anguish, Annie suggested meditating. Meditation had worked for Elizabeth in the hospital, after her skiing accident, while she was recovering from the blown knee and the spiral fracture in her leg and, later, from the pain of massive plastic surgery. She constructed a huge white room in her mind, then went around throwing open all the doors and windows. She put herself in the center and waited. Presently she saw the gossamer drapes heave inward as if an unfelt wind had entered the room. “That was Hans,” Annie told her later. “You’re helping him find peace. But Elizabeth doubted if the exercise was helping. That night, as she tried to take a nap, she could feel his hands groping at the edges of her fatigue, fingernails scraping at the seam between waking and sleeping. She had to get out of the house.
She went to the police again to report the marks at the brink of the canyon, as if a car had rested there. They told her the case had been closed, refusing even to take a statement. She spent a couple of afternoons with Annie, but Annie’s New Age prescriptions were starting to grate on her nerves, and Elizabeth was reluctant to burden her with further doubts. Besides, in her own mind Annie had already accounted for Elizabeth’s problems. “You’re reliving your dad’s death,” she declared. “His heart attack was senseless, and so was Hans’s accident. That’s why you’re inventing these theories. You’re trying to control things after the fact.” “The car didn’t go over the edge fast enough to make a clear tire print,” Elizabeth insisted. “He could have gotten out. The car must have been pushed or tipped.” “By his wife’s detectives?”
“No. I don’t think that anymore.”
“No, because his mom showed you how that couldn’t be true. Lizzy. you’re like those people who predict the end of the world. And when the world doesn’t end, they have to find some reason it didn’t. Like their prayers kept it from happening. It’s called cognitive dissonance. I’ll give you a book to readÖ” On one day, the worst so far, Elizabeth had driven to Fluntern Cemetery with a pocketbook full of cash and offered the operators of the cemetery’s gravedigging backhoe a healthy bribe to dig Hans up. They were North Africans, and thought she was joking at their expense. When she had convinced them that she was not, they took the money and instructed her to come back at midnight. She’d done as she was told, terrified, but determined to see Hans face-to-face. But the gravediggers didn’t show up. Worse, the police did. She was humiliated when Annie and Roland had to bail her out, and further mortified when she had to hire a lawyer to have the criminal charges dismissed. She escaped with a stern warning, but meanwhile her modeling agency had heard about the case. The head of the Helvetica office told her that if she ever tried a stunt like that again, her career as a model was finished. She had been so long without sleep by then, though, it hardly mattered. Photographers were starting to comment on her haggard look, and the calls for her services were thinning to a trickle. Annie started leaving the names of psychotherapists on her answering machine. Elizabeth ignored the messages. As for the dwindling job offers, she found she didn’t much care. She was glad for the free time. She needed to do more investigating. She found the drivers of the ambulance that had responded to the crash, and questioned them closely. One was particularly helpful in describing the clothing of the victim-the few scraps that hadn’t been charred to ashes, including the Schiaparelli tag inside the jacket. Hans had a Schiaparelli suit that he favored for meetings. Dove-gray flannel, as she recalled, as soft as a bird’s plumage. She asked about the general build of the body, and anything unusual the driver had observed. “There is one thing,” the driw’er recalled. He was a Frenchman with prominent pink gums and a postage-stamp mustache. “What?”
“I don’t like to talk about it, mademoiselle. Maybe somebody at the morgue could help you out. They have pictures, you know. They keep them under lock and key, but I have a friend who could show them to you. What’s your friend’s name?”
“That depends on you.
Elizabeth started to take out her wallet, but the man shook his head. “Not that,” he said simply, and gave an oily smile. Elizabeth felt her throat tighten. “You did see something unusual?” “On my mother’s life, I swear it.”
I should have built a shrine to Hans, thought Elizabeth, and let it go at that. Paste his picture to the wall, the one from Vieques, surround it with candles. Hans, I’m doing this for you, she thought shakily, as she unbuttoned her skirt. She left the driver’s apartment without showering. But before she did she turned and looked at the creep with such intensity he flinched. “If this is bogus,” she said coldly, holding up the piece of paper with the morgue attendant’s name, “I promise I will come back and this time you will feel nothing but pain.” At the morgue she found the attendant who had taken in the body. He was wary of her, as if she were a clochard who had wandered in from skid row. When she glanced in the dissection room mirror, she was shocked by the wildness of her hair and eyes. She gave him ten thousand francs and he pulled the records. The photographs appalled her.
There was little more to the body than a burned torso, arms ending in charred stumps, a head that was more bone than face. She had intended to photocopy or steal the dental records, but her first glance at the close-up of the skull told her that was hopeless. There was nothing approaching teeth left, only a dark hole where the mouth should be. She threw up in a wastebasket, and when she looked again the attendant was sealing the records away. “Just a second, I’m not finished,” she said, and grabbed the close-up of the skull out of his hand. “Where are his teeth?” “Comment?”
“His teeth. He doesn’t have any teeth. I want to see his dental records. ” “Pas de dents.”
“Exactly. That’s what I’m saying. There should be teeth, there should be dental records-ou sont-ils? Comprenez?” “Non. Je ne comprends rien. Allez. Vite. ” As the attendant turned away, she slipped the skull photo under her coat and sprinted for her car. In her rearview mirror she saw the attendant bolting out the door after her-she accelerated wildly, running two red lights on the way back to her apartment. She double-locked the door, jerked open a drawer and took out the photo Rose-Anne had given her, Hans Age 7 inked on the back. Vie ques 1970. Hans’s face smiled out at her, the small plump lips vaguely parted- She took the skull photo out of her coat, staring at the dark, toothless, empty hole. The phone rang. The police again, thought Elizabeth, and let the machine pick up. “Lizzy, it’s Annie,” said the voice. “I’ve got a new name for you, this one you have to check out: Dr. Bender-he’s Swiss, he’s a Jungian, he’s got a waiting list a mile long, but he’s willing to see you right away- Elizabeth snatched up the phone. “He didn’t have any teeth.” “Who didn’t? Lizzy, what are you talking about?” “Hans. His teeth were gone. Teeth don’t burn up in a car fire. Not if the bones don’t, and his skull was intact. ” “Poor baby, what have you been up to now- “Annie, did I ever mention Vieques to you? Does that ring any sort of bell? Because that’s making me crazy, too-I keep thinking I’ve been there.” “Vieques? No. What is it?”
“It’s an island. Never mind, I’m going to look it up on the Net, I should have done that long ago- “But what’s this about teeth? Lizzy?” “Unless it wasn’t. . .” She was thinking aloud now, hardly conscious of Annie on the other end. “Wasn’t what?”
“Unless the body wasn’t Hans. And that’s why there weren’t any teeth to compare against his dental records.” The thought struck her with such force she had to sit down on the bed. “Oh, wow-” said Annie.
“Exactly,” said Elizabeth.
“-you’re still in the denial stage, aren’t you? You should be way past denial and into anger. That does it, Lizzy, I’m calling Bender.” Elizabeth snapped to. “No. Annie? It’s okay. Forget I said anything. Really, I’m all right. I am angry. “You sit tight, you don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right over. Annie clicked off and Elizabeth hung up the phone. She picked up the two photos, one in each hand. Hideous as the skull was, the contrast was even more hideous: innocent boy and-what? Innocent victim? Could it be? Was Hans alive? It was no more than a hope, a desperate supposition, but suddenly Elizabeth felt calmer than she had in weeks. She rolled over on her futon and pulled her coat over her body and immediately was drawn into a fathomless sleep. When she awoke, it was the evening of the next day, a worried note from Annie was under her door, and she had the too-much-sleep hangover from hell. Her head ached, her clothes clung to her and smelled of stale sweat. She staggered up, then went into the bathroom and relieved herself. When she looked in the mirror she saw the deep creases from the futon on her face, the rat’s nest of her hair. It didn’t matter now. I’m not crazy after all, she thought. She stripped off her clothes and showered with water that was so hot it enveloped her in a steamy cloud. She let the water and heat and soap carry it all away, the fatigue and dirt and shame and memories of what she had done and how she had been during the past few weeks. She made a project of it: shampoo and conditioner; hair tied back; teeth brushed and flossed; sweats and tennis shoes. A big pot of coffee, a steaming cup in her hand as she turned on the computer, hot liquid coursing down her throat as Microsoft Windows came up with its oddly comforting orchestral flair. She hit “Start,” then “CompuServe 4.0 for Windows 97,” then punched in her password. She was about to click on “World Wide Web” when she heard the cheerful digitized voice saying, “You’ve got mail. ” She clicked it on, and every hair on the back of her neck stood up.