Marissa was claustrophobic. This thought terrified her.
"It took him a half hour to die. Now his relatives come to leave the memorial. They claim they don't. They say the crosses and flowers just appear out of nowhere. But of course they're lying."
Her eyes were riveted on the dark, narrow intake, where the child had died. What a terrible way to end your life.
Antonio's loud voice startled her again. But this time he was laughing. "Now, enough morbid stories. Let's eat!"
Gratefully, Marissa followed him inside. She was relieved to see that the interior was very comfortable, actually cozy. It was nicely painted and on the wall hung expensive paintings and tapestries. Antonio lit candles and opened prosecco. They toasted their first long weekend together and began to prepare dinner. Marissa whipped up an antipasto platter of marinated vegetables and ham but Antonio did most of the cooking. He made linguine with butter and the white truffles for the first course and trout with herbs for the main. She was impressed, watching his assured hands cut and mix and whisk and assemble. Enjoying his skill, yes, but she was saddened slightly too, regretting that her long hours at the shop prevented her from spending as much time as she would have liked in her own kitchen, making meals for friends.
Marissa set the table while he went downstairs to the wine cellar and returned with a 1990 Chianti from a famous local vineyard. A lover of wine, Marissa lifted an eyebrow and remarked that it was a wonderful vintage, hard to find; even the labels were collectors' items. "You must have a wonderful wine cellar. Can I see it?"
But as she stepped toward the door he pulled it shut, wincing slightly. "Oh, it's a mess down there. I'm embarrassed. I didn't get a chance to straighten it. Perhaps later."
"Of course," she agreed.
He set the food out and, in candlelight, they ate a leisurely dinner, talking the entire time. He told her about the crazy neighbors, a bad-tempered tomcat that thought he owned the property, the difficulty he and his father had had in finding period accessories to restore the mill.
Afterwards, they carried the dishes into the kitchen and Antonio suggested they have grappa in the parlor. He pointed it out to her. She walked into the small, intimate room and sat on the couch, then heard the squeal of the wine cellar door and his footsteps descending the stairs. He returned five minutes later with two filled glasses. They sat together, sipping the liquor. It seemed more bitter than most of the grappas she'd had but she was sure that, given Antonio's good taste, it was an expensive distillation.
She was feeling warm, feeling comfortable, feeling giddy.
Leaning back against his strong shoulder, she lifted her face and kissed him. Antonio kissed back, hard. Then whispered, "There's a present for you in there." He pointed to a nearby bathroom.
"A present?"
"Go see."
She rose and, in the room, found an antique silk robe on a hanger. The garment was golden, with tiny flowers on it and lace at the edging.
"It's beautiful," she called. She debated. Should she put it on? That would be a clear message to him . . . . Did she want to send it or not?
Yes, she decided, she did.
She stripped her clothes off, slipped the thin robe on then returned to the parlor. He smiled and took her hand, stared into her eyes. "You're so beautiful. You look just like . . . an angel."
His words echoed the line he'd used when they met. But there was something slightly off about his tone, as if he'd intended to say that she looked like something else and caught himself just in time.
Then she laughed to herself. You're used to your father--parsing everything he says, looking for double meanings and subtle criticisms. Relax.
Marissa sat down beside Antonio once more. They kissed passionately. He pulled the clip out of her hair and let it tumble to her shoulders then took her face in both hands and stared into her eyes for a long moment. He kissed her again. She was very light-headed from his touch and the liquor. When he whispered, "Let's go into the bedroom," she nodded.
"It's through there." He pointed to the kitchen. "I think there're some candles beside the bed. Why don't you light them? I'll lock up."
Picking up some matches, Marissa walked into the kitchen. She noticed that he'd left the wine cellar door open. She glanced down the steep stairs and could see much of the room. It wasn't messy at all, as he'd said. In fact, the place was spotlessly clean, well organized. She heard Antonio closing a window or door in another part of the house and, out of curiosity, walked quietly halfway down the stairs. She paused, frowning, staring at something under a table nearby. It was a soccer ball, half-deflated.
She recalled that the boy who'd drowned had been playing with a ball like this. Was it his?
Continuing down the steps, Marissa stooped and picked it up. The ball was a special one, commemorating one of Milan's big wins last year; the date was printed on it. So it couldn't have been the dead boy's--Antonio had said he'd drowned when the previous owner was living here. But Antonio had been the owner for at least five years--which is when his father, who'd helped renovate the place, had died. It was just a strange coincidence.
But wait . . . . Thinking back to his account of the incident, Marissa recalled that Antonio had said that nobody knew exactly what happened to the youngster. But if that was true, then how could he possibly know it'd taken the boy a half hour to die?
Fear began to grow deep inside her. She heard the creak of his footsteps above her. She put the ball back and turned to the stairs. But then she stopped and gasped. On a stone wall to the right of the steps was a photograph. It was of Antonio and a woman who looked very much like Marissa, her hair dangling to her shoulders. They were both wearing wedding rings--even though he said he'd never been married.
And the woman was wearing the same robe that Marissa now wore.
She was, of course, Lucia.
Who'd died last year.
With stunning clarity, Marissa understood: Antonio had murdered his wife. The boy with the football had perhaps heard her screams for help or had witnessed the killing. Antonio had chased him and flung him into the stream where he'd been pulled into the sluice and drowned while the mad husband watched him die.
Her heart pounding, she walked closer to the sideboard underneath the photograph. There was the gray bag that Antonio had picked up in Florence. It was sitting beside the bottle of grappa he'd just opened. Marissa opened the bag. Inside was a bottle of barbiturates, half empty. A glance at the top of the sideboard showed a dusting of powder, the same color as the pills--as yellow as the jaundiced eyes of the old woman who'd come up to Antonio's car.
It was as if he'd crushed some of the drugs.
To mix into her grappa, Marissa realized.
A searing wave of panic raced through her and pooled in her belly. Marissa had never been so afraid in her life. His plan was to drug her and--and then what?
She couldn't waste time speculating. She had to escape. Now!
Starting up the stairs, Marissa froze.
Antonio was standing above her. In his hand was a carving knife. "I told you I didn't want you in the wine cellar, Lucia."
"What?" Marissa whispered, weak with terror.
"Why did you come back?" he whispered. Then gave a chilling laugh. "Ah, Lucia, Lucia . . . you came back from the dead. Why? You deserved to die. You made me fall in love with you, you took my heart and my soul and you were going to just walk away and leave me alone."
"Antonio," Marissa said, her voice cracking. "I'm not--"
"You thought I was just one of your dolls, didn't you? Something you could create and then sell and abandon?"
He started down the stairs, closing the door behind him.
"No, Antonio. Listen to me--"
"How could you come back?"
"I'm not Lucia!" she screamed.
She thought back to their initial meeting. It wasn't an angel he thought she resembled when they first met; it was the wife he'd murdered.
"Lucia," he moaned.
He reached up to the wall and clicked out the lights. The room was utterly dark.
"God, no. Please!" She backed away, her bare feet stinging on the cold floor.
She could hear his footsteps descending toward her--the creaking wood gave him away. But then he stepped onto the stone floor and she lost track of where he was.
No . . . . Tears dotted her eyes.
He called, "Did you come back to turn me into another one of your dolls?"
Marissa backed away. Where was he? She couldn't hear him.
Where?
Was he--?
A stream of hot breath kissed her left cheek. He was no more than a foot away.
"Lucia!"
She screamed and dropped to her knees. She couldn't move forward, toward where she believed the stairs were--he was in her way--but she remembered seeing a small door against the far wall. Maybe it led to the backyard. Feeling her way along the wall, she finally located it, ripped the door open and tumbled inside, slamming it behind her.
Sobbing, she struck a match.
No!
She found herself in a tiny cell, four feet high and six square. No windows, no other doorways.
Through her tears of panic, she saw an object on the floor in front of her. Easing forward, hands shaking, heart stuttering, she saw that it was a porcelain doll, its black eyes staring at the ceiling.
And on the wall were dark brown streaks--blood, Marissa understood--left by the prior occupant of this chamber, Lucia, who spent the last days of her life in terror, trying vainly to scratch through the stone with her bare fingers.
The match went out, and darkness surrounded her.
Marissa collapsed on the floor in panic, sobbing. What a fool I've been, she thought.
I'll die here, I'll die here, I'll die--
But then, from outside the cell, she heard Antonio's voice, sounding suddenly quite normal.
He called, "It's all right, Marissa. Don't worry. There's a light switch behind a loose stone to the left of the door. Turn it on. Read the note hidden inside the doll."
What was happening? Marissa wondered. She wiped the tears from her eyes and found the switch, clicked it on. Blinking against the bright light, she bent down and pulled a folded piece of paper from the hollowed-out doll. She read.
Marissa--
The wall to your left is false. It's plastic. Pull it down and you'll see a door and a window. The door is unlocked. When you're ready to leave, push it open outward. But first look out the window.
She ripped the plastic away. There was indeed a window. She looked out and saw the footbridge. Unlike before, the property was now well lit with spotlights from the mill. She saw Antonio, with his suitcase, heading over the bridge. He paused, must have seen the light through the window of the cell and knew she was watching. He waved. Then he disappeared toward the parking lot. A moment later she heard his car start and the sound of him driving away.
What the hell's going on?
She pushed the door open and stepped outside.
There was her suitcase and purse. She tore off the robe, dressed quickly with trembling hands and pulled her cell phone from her purse, gripping it the way a scared child clings to a stuffed animal. She continued with the note.
You are safe. You have always been safe.
I am on my way back to Florence now, nowhere near the mill. But believe that I'm no psychotic killer. There is no Lucia. The old woman who told you about her was paid 100 euros for her performance. There was no little boy who drowned; I put the flowers and cross by the stream myself before I came to pick you up at the station today. The football was merely a prop. The blood on the wall of the cell is paint. The drugs were candy (though the grappa was real--and quite rare, I may add). The photograph of me and my "wife" was created by computer.
As for what is true: My name is Antonio, I have never been married, I made a fortune in computers, and this is my vacation house.
What, you are wondering, is this all about?
I must explain:
As a child I spent much time in loneliness and boredom. I immersed myself in the books of the great writers of horror. They were terrifying, yes, but they also exhilarated me. I would see an audience watching a horror film and think: They are scared but they are alive.
Those experiences moved me to become an artist. Like any truly great musician or painter, my goal is not simply to create beauty but to open people's eyes and rearrange their views and perceptions, the only difference being that instead of musical notes or paint, my medium is fear. When I see people like you who, as Dante writes, have lost the true path in life, I consider it my mission to help them find it. The night in Florence, the night we met, I singled you out because I saw that your eyes were dead. And I soon learned why--your unhappiness at your job, your oppressive father, your needy ex-husband. But I knew I could help you.
Oh, at this moment you hate me, of course; you are furious. Who wouldn't be?
But, Marissa, ask yourself this question, ask it in your heart: Don't you think that being so afraid has made you feel exquisitely alive?
Below are three phone numbers.
One is for a car service that will take you back to the train station in Florence.
The second is for the local police precinct.
The third is my mobile.
The choice of whom you call is yours. I sincerely hope you call the last of these numbers, but if you wish not to--tonight or in the future--I, of course, will understand. After all, it's the nature of art that the artist must sometimes send his creation into the world, never to see it again.
Yours, Antonio
Furious, tearful, quivering, Marissa walked to a stone bench at the edge of the water. She sat and breathed deeply, clutching the note in one hand, the phone in the other. Her eyes rose, gazing at the stars. Suddenly she blinked, startled. A large bat, a dark shape in the darker sky, zigzagged overheard in a complex yet elegant pattern. Marissa stared at it intently until the creature vanished over the trees.
She looked back to the stream, hearing the urgent murmur of the black water's passage. Holding the note into the beam of a light from the side of the mill, she read one of the numbers he'd given her. She punched it into her phone.
But then she paused, listening again to the water, breathing in the cool air with its scent of loam and hay and lavender. Marissa cleared the screen of her mobile. And she dialed another number.
DOUBLE JEOPARDY
There is no one better than me."
"Uh-huh, uh-huh. What're my options?'
Paul Lescroix leaned back in the old oak chair and glanced down at the arm, picking at a piece of varnish the shape of Illinois. "You ever pray?" his baritone voice asked in response.
The shackles rattled as Jerry Pilsett lifted his hands and flicked his earlobe. Lescroix had known the young man all of four hours and Pilsett must've tapped that right earlobe a dozen times. "Nup," said the skinny young man with the crooked teeth. "Don't pray."
"Well, you ought to take it up. And thank the good Lord that I'm here, Jerry. You're at the end of the road."
"There's Mr. Goodwin."
Hmm. Goodwin, a twenty-nine-year-old public defender. Unwitting co-conspirator--with the local judges--in getting his clients sentenced to terms two or three times longer than they deserved. A rube among rubes.
"Keep Goodwin, if you want." Lescroix planted his chestnut-brown Italian shoes on the concrete floor and scooted the chair back. "I could care."
"Wait. Just that he's been my lawyer since I was arrested." He added significantly, "Five months."
"I've read the documents, Jerry," Lescroix said dryly. "I know how long you two've been in bed together."
Pilsett blinked. When he couldn't process that expression, he asked, "You're saying you're better'n him? That it?" He stopped looking shifty-eyed and took in Lescroix's perfect silver hair, trim waist and wise, jowly face.
"You really don't know who I am, do you?" Lescroix, who would otherwise have
been outraged by this lapse, wasn't surprised. Here he was, after all, in Hamilton, a hick-filled county whose entire population was less than Lescroix's home neighborhood, the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
"All's I know is Harry, he's the head jailor today, comes in and tells me to shut off Regis 'n' Kathie Lee an' get the hell down to the conference rooms. There's this lawyer wants to see me, and now here you are telling me you want to take my case and I'm supposed to fire Mr. Goodwin. Mr. Goodwin, who's been decent to me all along."
"Well, see, Jerry, from what I've heard, Goodwin's decent to everybody. He's decent to the judge, he's decent to the prosecution, he's decent to the prosecution's witnesses. That's why he's one bad lawyer and why you're in real deep trouble."
Pilsett was feeling pushed into a corner, which was what sitting with Lescroix for more than five minutes made you feel. So he decided to hit back. (Probably, Lescroix reflected, just what had happened on that night in June.) "Who 'xactly says you're any good? Answer me that."
Should I eviscerate him with my resume? Lescroix wondered. Rattle off my role in the Menendez brothers' first trial? Last year's acquittal of the Sacramento wife for the premeditated arson murder of her husband with a novel abuse defense (embarrassment in front of friends being abuse too)? The luscious not-guilty awarded to Fred Johnson, the pretty thief from Cabrini-Green in Chicago, who was brainwashed, yes, brainwashed, ladies and gentlemen, into helping a militant cell, no not a gang, a revolutionary cell, murder three customers in a Southside check-cashing store. The infamous Time magazine profile? The Hard Copy piece?
But Lescroix merely repeated, "There is no one better than me, Jerry." And let the sizzling lasers of his eyes seal the argument.
"The trial's tomorrow. Whatta you know 'bout the case? Can we get it, you know, continued?" The three syllables sounded smooth in his mouth, too smooth: he'd taken a long time to learn what the word meant and how it was pronounced.
"Don't need to. I've read the entire file. Spent the last three days on it."
"Three days." Another blink. An earlobe tweak. This was their first meeting: Why would Lescroix have been reviewing the file for the past three days?
But Lescroix didn't explain. He never explained anything to anyone unless he absolutely had to. Especially clients.