The Wild Zone Read online

  Suzy said nothing.

  “I asked you a question.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”

  “You didn’t think my question was worthy of a response?”

  “I thought it was . . . rhetorical.”

  “Rhetorical,” he repeated with a raise of his eyebrows. “Good word, Suzy. I’m impressed. The next time people ask me what a successful, good-looking doctor is doing married to a skinny high school dropout, I’ll just ask them if that’s a rhetorical question. That ought to shut them up. Here, hold the ice against your cheek. That’s a good girl.” He leaned his head against hers, burying his mouth in her hair. “Mmmn. You smell so good.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Nice and clean. What is that? Ivory Soap?”

  She nodded.

  “How was your bath?”

  “Good.”

  “Not too hot?”

  “No.”

  “Good. You shouldn’t make your baths too hot. It’s not healthy.”

  “It wasn’t too hot.”

  “I cleaned up the mess in the living room.”

  The mess in the living room, Suzy thought. As if it got there on its own. As if he’d had nothing to do with it. “Thank you.”

  “We’ll have to get a new lamp.”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll have to take it out of your allowance.”

  “Of course.”

  “Sounds like I’m giving you too much anyway. If you can afford to waste it on midnight movies and places like the Wild Zone.”

  Suzy felt her body stiffen. The last place she wanted him to revisit was the Wild Zone. She swiveled around in his arms, tilting her head up toward him and lifting her lips toward his, hoping to distract him. She thought of Will, the sweet tentativeness of his kiss, as her husband’s mouth pressed down hard on hers. Of course, Dave’s kisses had started out just as sweet, just as tender, she remembered. Just as soft. As soft and as soothing as his voice the first time they’d met.

  “This is Dr. Bigelow,” the nurse had said. “He’s been studying your mother’s X-rays. He’d like to talk to you, if you have a minute.”

  “Alone,” Dr. Bigelow added with quiet authority. “Before your father gets here.”

  “Is something wrong?” she’d asked, thinking he was handsome in a bookish sort of way. Dark, curly hair. High forehead. Strong nose. Nice mouth. Wondrously long lashes guarding pale blue eyes. Kind eyes, she’d thought.

  He took her elbow, led her gently from her mother’s hospital room into the corridor. “Suppose you tell me.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said, although she understood all too well.

  “How did your mother receive her injuries?”

  “I already told the other doctors. She was walking the dog. Her feet got tangled up in the leash. She fell face-first into the road, hit her head on the curb.”

  “You saw her fall?”

  “No. She told us what happened when she got home.”

  “Us?”

  “My father and I.”

  “My father and me,” he corrected, then smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. A little bugaboo of mine. You wouldn’t say ‘She told I when she got home.’ You’d say ‘She told me. ’ That doesn’t change just because you add another name. I thought your father was at work,” he continued in the same breath.

  “What?”

  “You told the admitting doctors your father was at work at the time of your mother’s accident, that he didn’t know anything about it.”

  “That’s right. He was. He didn’t. He didn’t have anything to do with this.”

  “I didn’t say he did. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “What? No. You’re confusing me.”

  “I’m sorry . . . Miss Carson, is it?” he asked, checking her mother’s chart. “Suzy?” he asked tenderly, her name as soft as a wisp of cotton candy. “Why don’t you tell me what really happened?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t.”

  “Tell me, Suzy. You can trust me.”

  “Nothing happened. Her feet got tangled up in the dog’s leash. She fell.”

  “Her injuries are inconsistent with the type of fall you describe.”

  “Well, maybe I got it wrong. I told you I wasn’t there. I didn’t see what happened.”

  “I think you did.”

  “I didn’t,” Suzy protested. “I wasn’t there.”

  “How’d you get those bruises on your arms, Suzy? Another accident with the dog?”

  “These are nothing. I don’t even remember how I got them.”

  “What about this one?” He pointed to a red mark on her cheek. “It looks pretty fresh.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Your father did this, didn’t he? He caused your mother’s injuries. And yours,” he added softly.

  “No, he didn’t. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Am I through here?”

  “You don’t have to protect him, Suzy. You can tell me what really happened. We’ll go to the police together. They’ll arrest him.”

  “And then what?” Suzy demanded. “Do you want me to tell you what happens next, Dr. Bigelow? Because I can tell you exactly what happens next. My mother gets better, her bruises heal, she comes home from the hospital, she drops all charges against my father, the way she always does. And then we move to another city, and everything’s all right for a few weeks, or maybe even a couple of months, and then bingo—surprise! It starts all over again.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way, Suzy.”

  “I’m twenty-two, Dr. Bigelow. This has been going on ever since I can remember, probably since before I was born. You think you can just come along and wave your magic stethoscope and make everything better?”

  “I’d like to try,” he said.

  She’d believed him.

  She’d let him talk her into going to the police, let him persuade her to testify against her father, despite her mother’s wishes and fervent denials. He’d been by her side when her father was convicted and sentenced to six months in jail. Of course, he’d ended up serving less than four before being released and sent home to the welcoming arms of his wife. Three weeks later, those same arms had been broken in half a dozen places, along with her collarbone, and she was back in the hospital. Two weeks after the doctors signed her release, her father decided to move the family to Memphis, their eighth move in almost as many years. This time Suzy hadn’t gone with them. She’d stayed in Fort Myers, to be near her protector, the kindly Dr. Bigelow.

  She and Dave were married ten months later. Nine weeks after that, he hit her for the first time. She’d misused “I” and “me.” Of course he apologized profusely, and Suzy blamed herself. He was less apologetic the following month, when he slapped her over another egregious grammatical error. A full-scale beating wasn’t long in coming. Over the last five years, there’d been many such beatings: She took too long getting ready for bed; the pasta she’d prepared wasn’t al dente enough; she’d been “flirting” with the clerk in the bookstore. Too many beatings to keep track of, Suzy thought now, not bothering to resist as Dave’s hands pushed her head down toward his groin.

  She thought of biting down, then quickly banished the thought from her mind. He’d kill her for sure.

  Besides, it wasn’t enough to maim him. Not anymore.

  Now she wanted him dead.

  She thought she might have found the man to help her.

  SEVEN

  THE FIRST TIME JEFF tried to kill his brother, he was eight years old.

  Not that he had anything against Will personally. Not that he wished him any particular harm. Just that he wanted him gone. Will was always there, always the center of attention, his every cry heeded, his every wish attended to. The Chosen One. He took up all the space of every room he entered, guzzling up all the oxygen, leaving Jeff abandoned on the fringe, gasping for air.

  He was a colicky baby, and he cried often. Jeff used to
lie in his bed at night listening to Will’s howls and feeling strangely comforted by the fact that, despite all the attention lavished on him, his brother seemed as miserable as he was.

  Except for one crucial difference: When Will cried, everybody listened, whereas when he cried, he was told to stop acting like a baby. He was told to be quiet, to lie still, and not to get up, even if he had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, because he might disturb the baby. And so he would lie there in the dark, his stomach cramping, surrounded by his stepmother’s meticulously hand-woven quilts that loomed up at him, like hostile ghosts, from every corner of the room. And then, one night he hadn’t been able to hold it any longer, and he’d wet the bed, and the next morning, his stepmother, the squalling baby wriggling in her arms, had discovered the still damp sheets and berated him, and Will had suddenly stopped crying and started gurgling, almost as if he understood what was happening and he was glad.

  It was at that moment that Jeff decided to kill him.

  He’d waited until everyone had gone to bed, then he’d crept into the nursery. Will’s hand-painted wooden crib stood against one pale blue wall, a mobile of delicate, brightly colored cloth airplanes lazily circling his head. Toys of all shapes and sizes filled the shelves on the opposite wall. Stuffed animals—giant pandas and proud ponies, plush puppies and furry fishes—sat everywhere along the soft blue broadloom. It was a real room, Jeff understood even then. Not just some makeshift space in a room originally intended for another purpose. Like his room, with its small cot pushed up against the plain, white wall. His stepmother’s former sewing room. Of course he was only supposed to be staying there temporarily. Until his own mother got her act together and came back to get him. Which couldn’t have been soon enough. At least that’s what he’d heard his stepmother confiding to a friend one afternoon, as they cooed happily over Will.

  Jeff had stood over his brother’s crib, watching him sleep, then grabbed the largest of the stuffed animals—a smiling, moss-green alligator—and covered Will’s face with its fuzzy, lemon-yellow underbelly. Will’s little feet had kicked frantically at the air for several seconds, then stopped, his lithe little body going suddenly, completely still, whereupon Jeff had fled the room. He spent the night cowering under his cot, terrified the quilted ghosts would come after him and smother him as he slept.

  The next morning, when Jeff walked into the kitchen, there was Will, sitting proudly in his high chair, banging on its tray with his spoon, and crying for his cereal. Jeff had stared at him in awed silence, wondering whether he dreamed the whole episode.

  He still wondered.

  Even now, more than two decades later, lying in the double bed he shared with Kristin, poised between sleep and consciousness, Jeff wondered. Not whether he was capable of killing. He knew the answer to that. He’d killed at least half a dozen men in Afghanistan, including one man dispatched at point-blank range. But that was different. That was war. Different rules applied. You had to act quickly. You couldn’t afford to second-guess yourself. Everyone was a potential suicide bomber. And Jeff was convinced the man had been reaching for a weapon, not lifting his arms in surrender, as his distraught wife later claimed.

  Even now Jeff felt the sand in his eyes and the weight of the rifle in his hands. He heard the click of a trigger, followed by a woman’s hysterical screams, and saw the look of disbelief in the man’s dark eyes as an explosion of red circles suddenly splattered across the front of his white robe, like a pattern on one of his stepmother’s quilts.

  Yes, he was capable of killing.

  But deliberate, cold-blooded murder?

  Had he really tried to smother Will?

  And later, when Will was three years old and Jeff was pushing him so high on the backyard swing set that his stepmother had come running out of the house and snatched him off, screaming, “What are you trying to do? Kill him?” Had that been his intent?

  Or had he merely been trying to get her attention?

  Whatever his goal, it hadn’t worked. Will continued to thrive, no matter how nasty Jeff was to him. His father continued to ignore him, no matter how hard Jeff tried to please him. His mother never did get her act together or come back to claim him. His stepmother continued to shoo him out of her way.

  And then, when he was fourteen, he’d met a tall, lanky bundle of angry energy by the name of Tom Whitman, a natural follower looking for someone to show him the way, and a lifelong friendship was born.

  By the time Jeff was eighteen, rigorous daily workouts had added twenty pounds of well-sculpted muscle to his almost six-foot frame. The handsome face he’d inherited from his dad ensured that girls were as constant as they were easy. It seemed that all Jeff had to do was smile lazily in their general direction, and they came running.

  Jeff grinned at the memory of those early conquests, opening his eyes to the warm sun pushing through the heavy blue drapes of his bedroom window. “Krissie?” he asked, feeling the empty space next to him in bed and glancing at the clock on the bedside table. Two o’clock? In the afternoon? Could that possibly be right? “Krissie?” he called again, louder this time.

  The bedroom door opened. A man appeared in silhouette. “She went out,” Will said.

  Jeff pushed himself into a sitting position, flicked a wayward lock of blond hair away from his eyes. “Where’d she go?”

  “Publix. Apparently we’re out of toilet paper.”

  “No shit,” Jeff said, laughing at his own joke.

  Will laughed as well, although in truth, he didn’t find the joke that funny. “You feeling okay?” he asked.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I don’t know. You were pretty drunk last night. And it is the middle of the afternoon.”

  “It’s Saturday,” Jeff reminded him testily. “I get to sleep in.”

  “People don’t need personal trainers on Saturday?” Will tried to keep his voice light. He hadn’t meant to sound judgmental.

  “I don’t need them.” Jeff climbed out of bed, not bothering to cover his nakedness as he headed for the bathroom, chuckling as Will averted his eyes. He relieved himself, washed his hands, threw some water over his face, and was back a minute later. “I don’t suppose there’s any coffee,” he said, standing at the side of the bed and arching his back, stretching well-cut arms above his head. If Will was uncomfortable with this seemingly casual display of nudity, too bad, Jeff thought. It never hurt to let the competition know what they were dealing with. A little subtle intimidation could go a long way. Jeff grabbed his jeans from the edge of the bed and pulled them up over his bare hips.

  “I think Kristin made a fresh pot before she went out,” Will said, his eyes resolutely on the floor as he answered the question. He didn’t want Jeff to think he was staring.

  Jeff walked past Will through the living room and into the kitchen. He poured some coffee into a flamingo-shaped mug, added a bit of milk, then sipped at it gingerly. “When did she leave?”

  “About twenty minutes ago. Said she’d be back in an hour.”

  “She makes a good pot of coffee.”

  “She does everything well.”

  “That she does,” Jeff said, thinking of last night.

  “You’re really lucky.”

  “Yes, I am.” Jeff caught a look of hesitation on his brother’s face. “What?” he asked warily.

  “What?” Will repeated.

  “You look like you have something you want to say.”

  “No. Not really.”

  “Yes, really,” Jeff insisted.

  Will looked away, cleared his throat, looked back again. “It’s just that . . .”

  “Spit it out, little brother.”

  “Well . . . it’s just that . . . last night . . .”

  “Last night?”

  “She doesn’t mind?”

  “Doesn’t mind what?”

  “You know,” Will said. “About Suzy.” Her name felt like a prayer on his lips. It made him feel good just saying it
.

  “Nothing happened with me and Suzy.”

  “She doesn’t mind that you wanted something to happen, that something might have happened if . . .” What the hell was he doing? Will wondered. Was he just curious, or was he purposely trying to antagonize his brother?

  “ . . . if she’d chosen me?” Jeff said, finishing Will’s sentence for him. “Trust me, something definitely would have happened. But she didn’t choose me, did she? She chose you.” The Chosen One, Jeff thought, taking another sip of coffee, tasting it suddenly bitter on the tip of his tongue.

  “That’s kind of beside the point.”

  “Exactly what is the point?” Jeff asked impatiently. God, was it any wonder his brother had struck out last night? Was he always this damn tentative? “What are you trying to say, Will?”

  “I just have a hard time accepting Kristin’s really okay with this.”

  “She’s an amazing woman.”

  “Then why cheat on her?” The question popped from Will’s mouth before he could stop it.

  “It’s hardly cheating when the other person says it’s okay, now, is it?” Jeff said.

  “I guess not. Just that . . .”

  “What?”

  “I don’t understand why you’d want to.”

  “Hey, man. You know what they say. ‘Nothing smells like fresh pussy.’” Jeff laughed. “And speaking of which, what exactly happened last night?” He pulled up a kitchen chair and straddled it, enjoying his brother’s obvious discomfort.

  Will remained standing. “You know what happened.”

  “I know what didn’t happen. You didn’t—”

  “Can we not have this conversation again?” Will asked.

  “Did you at least cop a feel? Please tell me you got something out of last night besides a hangover.”

  “We kissed,” Will admitted after a lengthy pause. He didn’t want to cheapen the memory by talking about it.

  “You kissed? That’s it?”

  Will said nothing.

  “Did you at least get a little tongue action going?”

  “It was a good kiss,” Will said, turning away and heading back into the living room.