Legacies

11.

"Don't tell me this is another one of your decoy homes," Alicia said, "because I won't believe it."

What am I doing here? she wondered as she wandered among the antiques and wall hangings on the second floor. They'd taken the F train down to West Fourth, then grabbed the A back up to Twenty-third, and now here she was in this elegant Victorian town house in Chelsea.

"No, afraid not," Jack said, watching the street from a front window. "I just happen to have a key to it."

"You seem to know your way around the place. Where's the owner?"

"He's dead."

"Hiding in a dead man's house…" Alicia shivered. She didn't like this place. "I feel like a fugitive."

"In a way, you are." Jack turned from the window.

Something about the way he was looking at her now. The same something she'd sensed during their subway ride. Something wasn't right.

"But hopefully it's just for tonight," he said. "If we can find that transmitter tomorrow, and go public with it, you should be home free."

"Why should that stop them?"

"All right, it may not stop Thomas—he'll still think he deserves a share, and every shyster in the world will be banging on his door saying they can get him a piece of the broadcast power pie. But as for Kemel… it's game over. His whole mission here was to suppress this invention, to keep the world from even guessing it exists. But once the word is out, he's done for. My guess is he'll wind up swinging by his neck from a Saudi oil rig. And that's probably all those rigs'll be good for by then."

He picked up the Staples bag and put it on the low ornately carved table between them.

"Are you finally going to tell me what's in there?" Alicia said.

He'd been so secretive about it on the way here, saying, "Later… I'll show you later," every time she'd asked him.

"I found the safety deposit box that key fits," he said, looking down into the bag as if he'd suddenly found something very interesting inside.

"And?"

"All it contained were these."

Still not looking at her, he reached into the bag and began pulling out manila envelopes—half a dozen or so—and laying them on the table.

"Anything in them?"

Finally he looked at her. The words came out just above a whisper.

"Photos."

All color and texture drained from the room, and Alicia found herself in a chair, feeling weak, feeling sick.

"You okay?" Jack said, coming around the table and moving toward her.

Alicia held up a shaky hand—she didn't say yes or no, didn't nod or shake her head. Couldn't. Just wanted him to stop where he was, didn't want him closer, not near her, nobody near her.

He stopped, staring.

And then she was breathing again, deep gasps to help keep down the bile that threatened to spew all over the room, telling herself to keep calm, keep calm…

But how could she keep calm with those… those… pictures in the same room and knowing that Jack must have seen them, had to have seen them, else why the skittering eyes and that stricken look on his face? He knew, oh, God, he knew!

And worse, now she could see them. If she wanted to… if she dared to…

She'd never seen them, never dared try to imagine what they could be like because that would mean resurrecting the memories of those hours and days and months on the bed or the couch in the cellar with Daddy making her do things to Thomas and making her let Thomas do things to her, things that hurt her sometimes, just so Daddy could take pictures, so many pictures…

She took one last deep breath, held it, then forced herself to meet his gaze.

"Did you look at them?"

He nodded.

Had he stared at them? Ogled them? My God, how long had he had them? What must he think of her?

"All of them?"

"No. Enough to realize what and… who they were, and to make sure the envelopes didn't contain anything else. Alicia I'm sorry. I—"

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why did you bring them here? Why would you do this to me? What are you going to do with them?"

"Not what I'm going to do with them." He upended the Staples bag, and a wide box slipped out. "What you are."

He lifted the box so she could read the illustrated label on its front.

She squinted her blurry eyes. "A paper shredder?"

"Right." He pointed to the envelopes. "These aren't just photos. The negatives are in here. I could have burned them—for a while I seriously considered it. But I figured you might want to turn them into confetti yourself."

He pulled the shredder from the box, placed it on the floor in front of her, and plugged it in.

"Why are you doing this for me?" she said.

"Why wouldn't I? I've guessed you've been carrying around something heavy. I never realized how heavy."

She looked away. "I'm so ashamed."

"Of what?"

"How can you say that?" she said, hearing her voice rising. She didn't want to lose control—not here, not now. "You've seen. God, what you must think of me."

"I don't think you're to blame, if that's what you're getting at. No more than a battered child is to blame for his bruises. They call this kiddie porn—such a goddamn cutsey name. Call it what it is: pictures of children being sexually abused."

He picked up one of the envelopes and offered it to her.

"Go ahead," he said. "Time to put this behind you."

She forced her hand forward. About halfway to the envelope it stopped, as if it had run into an invisible wall. She pushed through that wall and willed her fingers to grip the envelope and take it from Jack.

He turned on the shredder and stepped back. She heard the blades begin to whir below the slot in its top.

She'd managed to touch the envelope, but when it came to reaching inside…

"You can do it," he said.

"This won't solve anything," she said. "There must be hundreds of prints in collections around the country. That man traded them for pictures of other kids."

"But these will be gone. No one will see them. And with the negatives gone, no one will be able make fresh copies from them. Maybe it's more symbolic than practical, Alicia, but it's a start."

Alicia looked at Jack and wanted to cry. How could she have so underestimated this man?

Yes, she thought, it is a start.

She realized that for the first time in her life she had control—power—over a set of these prints. And power over the negatives too. How could she do anything but destroy them?

She reached into the envelope and pulled out three or four prints, eight-by-ten sheets with glossy color surfaces—no, she would not look at them—and fed them into the top of the shredder. Whirring, grinding, then thin little strips cascading from the bottom, twisting into a tangle of paper spaghetti.

Yes! It worked. The images were destroyed, all coherency lost in the hundreds of divisions. No one but a madman would try to put them back together, and the more strips she added to the tangle, the harder it would be. A hundred, no, a thousand years to reconstruct even one image.

Sensing that this might be some sort of watershed for her, Alicia dug into the envelope and pulled out more to feed into the whirring maw. She felt tears running down her cheeks and heard herself laughing.

This felt so good… so good!