I love you,” I said over and over again.
“We’ve got to tell the police,” Ruby said.
“We can’t,” I said. “He’ll kill again. He’ll do it, and we can’t stop him.”
“You’ve got to make him stop. Please make him stop.”
“I will,” I said. “I promise. All I have to do is play the part. Whatever that means.”
We were still on the floor when the phone rang. Ruby pulled away from me and got into a kneeling position quicker than a cat. The muscles of her jaw tightened; her fingers, knuckles white from the applied force, dug hard against her thighs. I whirled around, glaring at the phone like it was a predator set loose in the apartment.
It rang again.
“Are you going to answer it?”
It rang again.
“What if he hangs up?” she asked. “What if this is our only chance to do what he wants?”
It rang again.
“Answer it, John! Answer it!”
I picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
My voice had the croaky sound of having been roused from a deep slumber.
“Elliot Uretsky?” asked a man.
I didn’t recognize the voice, but I knew it wasn’t the real Elliot Uretsky calling to terrify us again.
“Who is this?” I asked.
The cold bite to my voice was intended to intimidate.
“My name is Henry Dobson,” said the man. “Am I speaking with Elliot Uretsky?”
“You are,” I said, lying.
Play the part. . . .
“Sorry to call so late.”
I closed my eyes and fought to keep down what little was left inside my stomach. I glanced over at Ruby and saw that her hands were covering her mouth, ironically in a gesture not too dissimilar from that of the wise monkey warning against speaking evil. I thought of the woman who lived below us, whose severed fingers were meant to communicate the same.
“What do you want, Mr. Dobson? This isn’t a particularly good time to talk.”
“Then I’ll make it brief,” Dobson said. “I’m a fraud investigator with UniSol Health, and I’m afraid we might have a serious problem with your claim.”
CHAPTER 17
Our apartment buzzer buzzed at nine thirty and zero seconds the following morning. The visitor was expected, but even so, Ruby and I flinched at the sound. We looked absolutely horrible—not a wink of sleep for either of us. We had watched the news and read the papers online but hadn’t left the apartment—our prison.
Rhonda’s parents, a pleasant-looking gray-haired couple from Michigan, made a tearful plea on the local evening news—rebroadcast for the morning news as well—for anybody to come forward with information to help apprehend their daughter’s killer. The gruesome details of how the body was left—the demonic redistribution of her severed fingers—was somehow kept from the media.
“That’s us, John,” Ruby said. “We’re the ones who need to come forward. We’re the ones who need to help poor Rhonda’s parents.”
“And then we’ll be the ones who will live with another dead woman on our conscience. We’ve got to play out this next round. Then we’ll come forward.”
“You think Uretsky is the one who alerted UniSol about us?” Ruby asked.
I nodded. “Play the part,” I said. “We’ve got to convince the investigator that we are who we’re pretending to be. It’s got to be what he meant.”
I said it calmly, but I wasn’t feeling calm. I was racked with guilt—guilt that once I had intentionally killed a man, and then, years later, unintentionally killed a woman. I felt guilty for Ruby’s sickness, for stealing an identity, for dragging my wife into this. I felt guilty for playing Uretsky’s game and guilty for thinking of quitting. Blood will be on my hands. . . . I felt trapped and hopeless and sick myself, a sickness of my own damn making.
I buzzed Dobson in and waited. Minutes later I heard a soft knock. I opened the door, blocking Ginger’s escape attempt with my leg. A man stood in the doorway. I took a close look at our judge, jury, and potential executioner. I guessed him to be in his mid- to late thirties, partly because he was balding, with clusters of sandy brown hair barely allowing for a comb-over. As for body type, he was thin up top, but thick in the middle, another sign of middle age. A bushy mustache accentuated his thin lips, and he wore glasses, round, wire-rimmed style, held in place behind ears that stuck out from his head. Dressed in a blue oxford shirt, red tie, and tan slacks, he reminded me of the accountants Ruby once worked with back when she was a graphic designer for a