Page 67 of In a Haze

Joe, of course, has heard it all but has kept his eyes on Don the whole time. When I get there, he takes the tie from my left hand. My right is still clutching the other phone and the letter opener. “Stay back, Anna. There’s fucking glass everywhere.” He pulls the tie apart but the ends are knotted, so he carefully glides across the floor, taking a knife out of the block on the counter to saw the knots off one at a time.

While he’s busy, I say, “I should clean it up.” I don’t want the kids stepping on it later. I begin carefully moving toward the tiny closet that I know has all kinds of cleaning supplies.

“Nope. We gotta go.” Already he’s binding Don’s hands behind his back.

“Then what can I do to help?”

“Start tying his feet together.”

Again, I move slowly to avoid glass, hoping I don’t step on a sliver I can’t see, and then pick up the half of the tie Joe has draped on Don’s leg. I slide the rope underneath his foot and, after wrapping it around, begin to make a knot. But when Joe moves down to where I am, I gladly let him take over. The fabric in the rope has a silky feel, and I hope that doesn’t mean it will be easy for Don to slip out of.

I stand, waiting for Joe to finish, and he picks Don up, hoisting him over his shoulder. It’s amazing how Joe seems to know what I’m thinking. I know we need to bring Don with us until we’ve sorted out this whole mess, but I don’t know if we’ll be able to get him to talk.

I don’t want to broadcast the phone in my hand to Joe, but I know we need Don’s real one as well. There might be information on it, too, things he wasn’t careful about.

But it’s gone.

“Where’s his phone?”

“I took it.” He lifts his free shoulder so I can see that he’s folded the sleeve over to hold the phone in place. We walk through the living room, the plush carpet caressing my feet, making me realize I do have a shard of glass in the pad of my right foot, but I don’t dare pull it out now. As we cross the marble floor of the great room, I begin holding my foot up a little so as to ease the pressure and also prevent the shard from digging deeper, but I hurry so I can open the door for Joe. I’m able to look up the stairs from where I am, and I feel relief that I can’t see a soul. Much as I would have loved a glimpse at my babies, I don’t dare right now.

Soon, we’re outside, breathing the fresh morning air. The sun isn’t quite up yet, but it’s close. If the neighbors choose to look out the window right now, they’ll know something strange, possibly illegal, is going on. Joe is moving fast, making it hard for me to keep up as I hobble, but I appreciate his sense of urgency.

It’s not until we’re turning the corner, almost to the van, that I see them.

Coming down the street we just left are flashing blue-and-red lights, heading our direction.

24

I’m frozen momentarily, because the gig is up. We’ve been caught and there’s nothing else we can do. But the police car stops at the house, three doors down from the corner we turned, and because there’s a fence and a tree and lots of distance between there and here, the cops aren’t looking for us.

They’re responding to a call.

Joe is already at the van, parked beside the alley exit. Without me, he’s opened the door and placed Don in the back. I rush over, not caring about the shard in my foot, and I’m in the passenger seat by the time Joe is in the driver’s, turning the key to the ignition. But I’m amazed at how he doesn’t peel out into the street. Instead, he slowly shifts the van into drive and eases out as if we’re taking a leisurely trip, and he doesn’t turn on the lights until we’re a block away. He almost doesn’t need it anymore.

I’m still holding the stupid letter opener, so I drop it on the floor. Then, after buckling my seatbelt, I pull up my foot onto my other leg to see if I can dig out the glass. “Do you suppose they got the 911 call from his cell phone and traced it to his house?”

Joe shrugs, still calmly driving down the street. “Maybe. But don’t you think it’s just as likely that woman back there made a call?”

I hadn’t thought of that. “I guess so. But what if it wasn’t? What if it was Don’s phone? Will they be able to trace us now?” Ah, finally. Fished that tiny sliver of glass out of my foot and already it feels better.

“I don’t know.” After a second, he adds, “I hadn’t thought of it.”

“I want to ask you something.” I turn on the burner phone in my hand and pull up the text messages I think were from Don to Joe from years ago. When I tell him the phone number, I ask, “Did that used to be your cell?”

“Sounds about right. Why?” He’s glancing over at the object in my hand.

“Because I found this phone in his desk in a drawer at the very back—and I think he’s used it to conduct questionable activities.” I pull up the text messages that I suspect are between my psychiatrist and husband. “Tell me what you think this is.”

We’ve gone a few miles, including stopping at red lights, by the time I’m to the spot where the other party tells Don to visit his wife to avoid arousing suspicion. “Sounds like someone from the institute.”

“I was thinking Dr. Wilson.”

“Yeah, probably.”

Then I tell him about the glimpses of past memory that I’ve had—about the girl in the basement and Don slipping something in my drink. “I think we need to call this person out.”

“What do you mean?”

---