Treasure Box

9. Missing

Quentin had a lot of time for thinking as he trekked through the waning afternoon to the nearest town, which was not particularly near. He had time to think as he waited for a car to come up from New York to pick him up. And on the drive down to La Guardia, and as he flew on the shuttle to Washington, and at last when he walked into the apartment where he had lived when he fell in love with Madeleine, he had plenty of time to think.

He thought of all kinds of things. About Grandmother. Lizzy had said she was a mortal, a living person. And she had said, once with her own mouth, or the image of her mouth, and once with the mouth of a rat in the fireplace, "Find me." Should he? Why couldn't she find him? And if he did find her, what then? Did she expect him to get involved in some kind of struggle between the kind of people who could do what had been done to him? Who could call the spirits of the dead and make them seem alive to some poor sap of an ordinary mortal? Would Grandmother make him face her again, face the User? No, he wasn't going to do it. The old lady could rot, the User could rot, they could all rot, they should all go down into that graveyard and stay there. Deep and cold under the snow. Stay there.

He also thought of Lizzy, of what she had said about life after death. The dead still existed, with all their memories, but the way she was living didn't sound like any theology Quentin had heard of. Why didn't anybody else know about this? He couldn't be the only one who had spoken with someone from beyond the grave. He knew he wasn't. So why wasn't there some book about this? And if the dead just hung around and mortal people could call them and control them and make them do things, what sense did that make? What was it all for? And why did he have to spend so many years without Lizzy?

The one thing he could not permit himself to do was think of Madeleine. The pile of books about sex was still on his nightstand—he hadn't been back to this apartment since they got married. He had never slept with her here. But her face was everywhere in this place. He blotted her out. She wasn't real. But he remembered the feel of her under his hand. How perfect her skin was. How cool and dry, and yet how warm when she should be warm.

Of course she was perfect. So were the berries and the pineapple and the pears. So was the luster of the table and the dishes and the goblets. Everything was perfect because the User took it out of his head. And she knew all the right things to say and do because the User stole it out of Lizzy's memory or trapped Lizzy inside the illusion. Forced Lizzy into this hideous fantasy in which all that Quentin amounted to was a pair of hands to open up the lid of a box.

Well, why go to all this trouble? Why him? With the kind of power the User had, why not just take some poor sap from up the road, walk him on down to the big house on the Hudson, and tell him to open the box?

The box was the big deal. There was some kind of barrier protecting the treasure box, locking the User outside. She apparently had thought that Quentin could get past that barrier and was furious when he didn't.

But what stopped him? He felt no barrier. He was about to open it when she ran out. Why did she give up so soon? Questions that had no answers.

Who was the User? Where was she? And how much power would she have with a .45 bullet boiling through her skull?

He lay there in the bed. Three in the morning. Trembling and cold. Check the thermostat. Already hotter than he normally kept his house. He must have taken a chill this afternoon on the road. Last night at this time he had been sleeping in a bed full of cobwebs after making love to his imagination. Last night he had slept in a stone-cold house that he only thought was warm. Why didn't he freeze to death? Did the User have the power to keep him warm? Four in the morning. He was starving. He had tried to eat the crackers in the cupboard, the only food in the apartment that hadn't passed its expiration date, but they were like dust in his mouth. He got up now and ate them anyway, and drank tap water, it felt like gallons of tap water. He showered. He took all his clothes out of his suitcases, clothes that had been put into dusty drawers and a filthy wardrobe, and laid them out to air. The clothes he had actually worn, the day he arrived at the house and today when he left, he threw them all into the garbage. He threw away the toothbrush from his kit. Five in the morning, he slipped back between the sheets and now he could sleep, still not letting himself think of Madeleine.

But sometime in the night, his mind went where he dared not let it go, and he woke up sobbing in grief for her. Madeleine, Mad, Mad. I don't care if you were a lie, I loved you. I loved you and you left me and I didn't do anything to deserve it, I was good to you. He cried himself back to sleep.

When he woke again it was five in the afternoon. Dark outside already. He got up and called the garage that kept his DC car. In the time it took them to bring it over, he showered again, dressed. He came out to meet the driver, tipped him, then got in the car and drove to Tysons Corner and picked up some shirts and slacks, socks and underwear. A new pair of running shoes. A new razor, new kit, two new suitcases exactly like the ones he already had. A new winter jacket. He drove home and changed into new clothes, then put everything that had been in the house on the Hudson, including the clothes he had stuffed in the garbage in the wee hours of the morning, packed them into the old suitcases, and carried them out to the Dumpster. It was nine o'clock. He drove to Lone Star and ate peanuts and steak soup and it was all ashes in his mouth but he went on and ate the salad and the filet because he was not going to let this thing kill him. He was going to go on with his life.

He got home and the message light on his answering machine was blinking. Someone had called.

But that wasn't possible. When he was away from one of his residences—which was most of the time—he had all the calls automatically routed to a single answering service in Nebraska. When he got to one of his residences and wanted to start receiving local calls on his own phone, he would call in and punch in the code to release calls to that particular phone number.

Only his parents, his lawyer, and Madeleine had the codes that would allow them to override his answering service and reach the answering machine in this residence. And his parents and his lawyer had no idea he was here. They would assume he was still at Madeleine's family house on the Hudson River.

Which meant that the message on his machine had to be from Madeleine. Except that Madeleine didn't exist. Which meant that it had to be from the person behind Madeleine. The person who made her. The User, who could wander free from her body and follow him wherever he went, who would know where he was, who would know he was away when the phone call was made so her intention was to leave a message on the tape, and not talk to him directly.

He could hear Lizzy's voice telling him that the User wasn't done with him yet. She hadn't got what she wanted. If she needed him before, she still needed him. Only now it wouldn't be love that she used to motivate him.

He didn't want to hear the message. But he reached out and touched the PLAY button.

"Quentin Fears? This is Ray Cryer. We're worried that we haven't seen Madeleine since you ran out on her yesterday. We have the local police looking for her, but it occurs to us she might be out looking for you and you may find her first. If you do, we'd appreciate a call. Her mother and sister and I are worried sick. Just worried sick. I know you were very angry yesterday, but I hope you'll still help us find our little girl. The local police here might call you to ask you some questions. I hope you'll cooperate with them. You have our number." There was an emotional catch in his voice at the end.

Ray Cryer? Madeleine's mother and sister? These were people Madeleine had never spoken of. Quentin had certainly never met them. Nor did he have their number. But he had no doubt that they would be completely convincing to the police. That was what the User did best—completely convincing people.

The implications were clear. Quentin had better do what they—no, what the User—wanted, or the police would be looking far and wide for a woman they would never find because she didn't exist. And when they didn't find her, it would start looking very bad for Quentin. Her parents say that Quentin had a fight with her. He snuck away with his suitcases, and ever since then they haven't seen their daughter. Why did he sneak off? Where is Madeleine? Your Honor, you don't have to find a body to know that there was foul play.

No. A murder trial was out of the question. There had to be some evidence. The mere disappearance of a person wasn't enough. But that didn't mean that the police wouldn't be convinced that there was a murder. That they wouldn't be dogging Quentin's heels for months and years looking for Madeleine. And the publicity. No, it wouldn't even take publicity. It would just take visits from police investigators to all of his partners and all of the political people he knew in every city where he did business—Madeleine had met them all, and if the User forgot any of them she could just drop in on Quentin's own mind and take the list out of his memory. He had no secrets from the User. The cloud of suspicion would grow around him. His parents. They would question his parents.

"You have our number." No doubt the police would hear Ray Cryer say that. Even if he erased this tape, there was probably also a recording on the other end, and then they would wonder why he had erased his copy. And since he didn't have the number, what choice did he have? He had to go back to New York, back to the house on the Hudson. Where the police would ask him about that night he spent in the house. If he said he slept in the house with Madeleine and had breakfast with her family, they'd go in and find a cold, dark, waterless house with only his footprints in the dust and only one side of the bed slept in. If he said the house was empty and dark, the police would doubtless find it sparkling clean and well lived-in, with Ray Cryer expressing his bafflement that Quentin would tell such an obvious lie.

He couldn't win. There was no escape from her. He might as well give up and head back there first thing in the morning. Or get in his car right now and drive all night and...

No way. That's what the User wanted. For all he knew, she was putting these thoughts in his head right now to try to bring him back. Well, Lizzy had told him he was strong. He had some power to resist her. And the User wasn't all-powerful, Lizzy had said that, too. It strained her there in the library at breakfast to keep six dead people under control, maintain the illusion of Madeleine, and show various servants bringing in imaginary food, all at once. During the police investigation the User wouldn't have half so much to do. She wouldn't have to produce the deep illusion of Madeleine at all. As for this Ray Cryer, he might be a real person and not a mental construct at all. Making the house look clean and lived-in would be a cinch. But could she create the illusion of detailed chemical evidence? Bloodstains? Anything that would convince a court that a crime had been committed? Maybe—but wouldn't she have to know exactly what the lab technicians would need to look for? Could she make her illusions show up on a photograph? Or would she have to follow the photograph constantly to make sure everyone saw the right things when they looked at it? If she knew enough and had power enough to do all that, then there was no point in his even trying to resist her.

But she wasn't infinitely powerful. Her limits could be reached. And he was not going to roll over and play dead.

It was eleven at night. He called his parents in California.

"She left me," he said. Almost his first words.

"No," said Mom.

"Aw, Quen, I'm so sorry," said Dad. "I never would've thought. She was so—you two were so perfect together."

"I don't know where she is. She didn't tell me where she was going."

"How could she do that?" said Mom. "You just don't do that. Decent people don't..."

"Does her family know where she might have gone?"

Here it came—the beginning of his counter-story. Since he had never met or heard of this Ray Cryer, he wasn't going to go along with the User's story that they knew each other. "I never met her family. She took me to the house on the Hudson, but there was nobody there." That was dangerous, he knew, since they were telling the police that he had met her parents. But if they gave him a lie detector test about meeting Madeleine's parents at the house, he could pass it. "And then today, this afternoon, she left."

"But that's so odd," said Mom. "She was taking you there to meet them."

"Did you fight?" asked Dad.

"I had questions. She had no answers. She knew I wasn't happy but no, we didn't fight."

"Oh, son, it'll work out, I know it will," said Mom. "When she realizes you love her no matter what—"

"I do love her, Mom."

"Well there you are. She'll come back, Quen. How could she not? The way you two looked at each other, it was so sweet, you're so much in love with each other, for pity's sake!"

"Dad, Mom, it's not just that she's gone. I'm worried."

"What about?" asked Dad.

"What if something happened to her? She just walked out. I don't know where she went. I didn't see her on the road as I walked to the next town. I didn't see her footprints in the snow."

Silence on the other end of the line.

"Quen, I know this is out of line, but I have to ask. You didn't hit her or anything, did you?"

Mom was furious. "How dare you even suggest such a thing about Quentin!"

"Calm down, Mom, it's all right. If she doesn't turn up soon, the police are going to ask exactly the same question, and they ought to. Dad, I never raised a hand to her or hurt her in any way. The last time I saw her she was fine."

"Why do the police even have to be involved in this?" said Mom. "Wives leave husbands all the time."

"I never met her parents, but now all of a sudden I have a phone call from a man claiming to be her father and he probably is. But he's lying and saying that I met him, which I didn't, and he has the police looking for her and they're going to question me."

"This is so strange," said Mom. "You should be calling to tell us you're going to have a baby, Quentin, not that the police are going to question you."

"You never met her parents," said Dad, "and now suddenly her father is phoning you and they've got the police looking for her. Quentin, is there a chance that Madeleine was setting you up for blackmail all along? You pay up and suddenly there she is, and what was all this missing persons investigation about?"

"I don't know. So far nobody's asked me for money. It's all really confusing and I'm not sure what's really going on. But in case you're contacted and questioned, I wanted you to hear about this first from me."

"That was very wise of you, son."

"What should we tell them?" asked Mom.

"The absolute, complete truth, Mom. I didn't do anything wrong and there's nothing to hide."

"Quentin, I'm so sorry that this is happening," said Dad. "If it's any consolation, we thought she was as wonderful as you did."

"Yeah, well, we're all suckers for the perfect woman, aren't we, Dad? The difference is, the one you married is real."

"Oh, Quen," said Mom.

"Listen, there's a chance that this will hit the papers and if it does, they'll make it look like I'm guilty of something horrible because that's what sells papers. You know, Software Millionaire's Wife Missing, Husband Can't Explain Disappearance. If it's a con, and I think it is, you can be sure there'll be some evidence that supposedly contradicts things I've told you. No matter what other people are saying, though, you can be sure of this: I did no harm to Madeleine, and if I could have her back right now, as my wife, flesh and blood, right here beside me, I'd be the happiest man alive." And then, because this was true, and because he was tired, and because he had never had a chance to mourn for the wife he lost, he wept, his parents listening to him on the phone, believing him, comforting him.

And why not believe him? Everything he had said was true. And he had told them all that they could possibly believe.

Afterward, physically and emotionally drained, he fell asleep in front of the TV in the living room before Letterman got to the top ten list.

Next day he phoned his Virginia lawyer and asked him how to go about reporting a missing person. He explained that his wife had left him in New York State, but he had come home to Herndon assuming that she would find her own way back to one of their residences, only she wasn't answering the phone anywhere and until he located her he had to assume that something might have happened to her and he wanted the police to be on the lookout just in case—wasn't that the right thing to do? And his lawyer assured him, definitely, that was the right thing to do.

So he did it, but they didn't seem to think there was any urgency. "She'll turn up, Mr. Fears. Just give her time to cool down."

"I'm sure you're right," he answered. "But please just put out the word, won't you? Call the police up there and ask them to be on the lookout?" They assured him they'd see to it. He knew that the New York police would assume he was launching his own search because of the phone message from Ray Cryer, but if he didn't start searching it would look even worse.

That afternoon he boarded a flight to San Francisco and by evening he was in his lawyer's office.

"Only for you do I cancel dinner at my favorite restaurant in San Rafael and drive down into the city."

"You should have told me," said Quentin. "I would have come up and joined you there."

"I didn't want you there," said Wayne Read. "I wanted me and my wife there. Being married to me wouldn't be easy for any woman, and it's particularly hard for my wife. So this is costing me, Quentin."

"Madeleine left me."

"Oh." Wayne looked nonplussed for a moment. Then he put his head down on his desk. "I'm trying really really hard, Quentin."

"Go ahead and say it. You told me so."

"Quentin, I'm not happy to be right. I wanted you to be right."

"Yeah, well, she's gone. And I need your help."

"I assume she's got a lawyer. Do you know who yet? Because I'm not a divorce lawyer and—"

"Wayne, you're not getting it. She's gone. Not just leaving-me gone, I mean gone. I've filed a missing persons report in Virginia. I got a phone message from a man claiming to be her father, and he says they've also got the police looking for her up there."

Wayne's demeanor changed. A little bit more serious. A little bit suspicious, too, though he was trying to conceal it. Well, Quentin didn't blame him.

Quentin gave him the whole story he had told his parents.

"Well, somebody's bound to have seen her leave the house. She'll turn up somewhere."

"I doubt it."

"Why?" Again the suspicion.

"Because I never met this Ray Cryer but he left me a phone message implying that we knew each other. He had the code that let him switch off my answering service and leave a taped message on my machine in Herndon—and only Madeleine had those codes. Well, besides you and my parents."

"So she's not missing."

"Let's just say that this guy who calls himself Ray Cryer knows more about her disappearance than I do."

"Then let's find her," said Wayne. "Between the investigators we can hire and the police, we'll find her."

"No we won't. Nobody will ever find her."

Wayne thought for a while, tapping his pencil. "Quentin, are you telling me the truth?"

"Everything I've told you is true."

"That's not exactly what I asked." Then, as Quentin was about to speak, Wayne raised his hand to stop him. "Wait a minute, Quentin. Don't get mad at me, but I have to tell you. If you have committed some crime, and you wish me to be involved with your defense in any way, don't confess that crime to me. If you confess a crime to me, then my advice to you will be to turn yourself in and make a full confession, and I will not represent you in your defense. Do you understand me?"

"Relax, Wayne," said Quentin. "I didn't kill her. As far as I know she's as alive as she ever was."

Wayne relaxed a little.

"And I do want to begin a search. But not some little penny-ante search. It's going to have to cover every city where I have residences, which is a long list, as you well know. But she might have gone to any of those places and I have to at least go through the motions of a serious search. Don't I?"

"Go through the motions?"

"I told you. We won't find her."

Wayne shook his head. "I really hate paradoxes, Quentin. Do you know where she is or don't you?"

"I know she's nowhere."

"If she's buried in the basement of that house, Quentin, the police are going to find her."

"She's not buried anywhere because she's not dead. She's also not alive. She never existed."

"That must have been an interesting wedding, Quentin."

"The real search is for her true identity, Wayne. I want to be able to prove that the Madeleine Cryer I married has no birth certificate in any of the fifty states. That she never went to school anywhere, that she never had a job. The other investigations are because I have to look like a worried husband searching for his vanished wife. But my attorney has to know that what I'm really searching for is the identity of the person who deceived me. Or someone who might know the truth about her."

Wayne leaned back in his chair. "Now, that's interesting. I wonder where the investigator should start."

"There's almost nowhere he can start, Wayne. Like you said, I was a fool. The whole time we were engaged, back in Virginia, she claimed she was staying with friends, moving from house to house. We talked on her cellular phone. I never had a phone number for any of those friends. Never met one. Never heard a single name. She said she was in a job somewhere in the bureaucracy, but I don't know what it was, and frankly I don't believe she ever had such a job, though of course I'll pay to have the federal personnel files searched to see if she worked for them."

"What about this Ray Cryer?"

"Whoever he is, I doubt he'll be real helpful to us—if he talks to our people at all."

"But we can investigate him and his background," said Wayne. "Either he really is her father or he's faking, and either way, checking up on him will help us."

"And the house, Wayne. The deeds. And I mean going back generations. She knows that house. That wasn't a fake. She knows it in the dark. She's connected to it somehow."

"We'll do it, Quentin. In the meantime, you won't mind if I strike her name off your insurance policies and out of your will?"

"Write it up and I'll sign everything."

"The police are going to be so suspicious of you."

"Of course they are. You are, and I pay you handsomely and listen to your wise and intensely personal advice. Think how much less likely they are to think I'm telling the whole story."

"Though of course you are telling the whole story." The irony in Wayne's voice was palpable.

"I've told you the whole story I'm going to tell the police and the whole story I told my parents and the story I'm going to tell everybody else forever, and every bit of it is true."

"But there are some bits you sort of left out?"

"Maybe."

"Are you going to tell me?"

"I want to. If I dare."

"Attorney-client privilege protects everything you tell me. I've already given you my don't-confess-a-crime-to-me warning. Please remember that I mean it."

"But what if the thing I tell you convinces you I'm out of my mind?"

"I'm already convinced."

"I'm not joking, Wayne. I've been questioning my own sanity, and unless you're crazy, you will too."

"Crazy people have as much right to a lawyer as sane people."

"But what if you thought it would be in my best interests to be committed to a mental hospital? To be declared incompetent?"

"I have no standing for that," said Wayne. "Your parents could try it, or your wife, or your children if you had any. Your heirs, perhaps."

"My in-laws?"

"They're running a different scam right now," said Wayne. "The point is, your attorney couldn't try to commit you on his own account. I'd be disbarred if I tried. My job would be to stop them."

"But if you—when you don't believe me, will you still work as hard for me as before? Or will you start handing my work over to underlings until you finally spin me off to some other lawyer?"

"Quentin, now you're bothering me. What is this, some alien abduction thing?"

"I wish." He took a deep breath. "Get out your recorder."

"I'll remember what you tell me."

"I want it in my own voice."

"Quentin, attorney-client privilege only protects you in court, not from public attacks on your reputation. Of course I'll do all I can to protect any tape you make here, but the best protection is for the tape never to exist."

"Tape it."

"Your call." Shaking his head, Wayne got out his recorder. And Quentin told him what really happened, starting with his sighting of a woman who looked like Lizzy at the Elden Street Giant food store in Herndon. From there he skipped to the events at Madeleine's family mansion. The midnight snack. The reason she gave him not to take a shower. The exquisite food at breakfast. The other people at the table. The walk on the bluff. And then the treasure box, Grandmother saying "Find me," Madeleine fleeing into the graveyard. No footprints but his own. The names on the headstones. The dark, cold, empty house, the dust and filth, the bed that only he slept in, the bureau that held only his own clothing. The words that appeared on the door. The talking rat. And then Lizzy, dead Lizzy come back to talk to him, to explain what she understood. And the long walk back to civilization.

Told all in a stream, Quentin didn't believe the story himself.

But there was Wayne Read, turning off the tape recorder, nodding. "I'll keep this tape, Quentin. In my safe. I'm not going to give it to a secretary to transcribe."

"Right."

"What I don't get, Quentin, is why you told me this... stuff."

"Maybe I just had to tell someone."

"Not you, Quentin. You're not a get-it-off-your-chest kind of guy."

"Maybe I'm afraid that somewhere along the line I'm going to get killed. And if I am, I want somebody to know why."

"Me? Your close, intimate lifelong friend?"

He was right. It wasn't Wayne Read he had told this story for. Quentin thought for a moment. "If I'm dead, Wayne, then I want you to play this for my parents."

"Quentin, come on."

"I want them to know."

"Quentin, it's one thing to tell me this stuff, but telling your folks this thing about Lizzy coming back—how is that going to do anything but hurt them?"

Quentin leaned across the desk. "Give me the tape and I'll find another attorney."

"I didn't say I wouldn't do it, I just gave you my best advice. I'm used to you ignoring me. But you are an ass, Quentin."

"Thanks."

"If you're not crazy you're the stupidest liar I've ever known. Dead people hanging around just in case somebody conjures them back? For breakfast?"

"I'm sure inventive, aren't I, Wayne?"

"The worst thing is that I can't even tell my wife because if she heard this story she'd know I was having an affair and didn't even care enough to come up with good lies."

"Are you having an affair?"

Wayne sighed and looked away for a moment. "I'm not, but she is."

"You're kidding."

Glumly, Wayne explained. "When she started getting suspicious of me, I figured something had changed, and it wasn't me, I was just the same as always. So I had her watched for a few weeks. She was giving—favors, I should say—to guys in the parking lots of bars."

"And she's still accusing you of having affairs?"

"Quentin, people are crazy. That's why I told you that. So you'd understand—I know that people do crazy things. But they do them in the real world. The guys my wife sees—they're cowboy types. She goes to cowboy bars. In Marin County, right in San Rafael, we have three kids, and she's blowing guys in the parking lot in exchange for a joint. How is that crazier than your telling me this horrible story that you actually want me to play for your parents if you suddenly croak. I once thought you were the only island of sanity in a screwed-up world. You had no connections except your parents. You didn't get emotionally involved. Rational decisions kept doubling your fortune every three years or so. No waste. No lies. No illusions. Then you fall in love with a woman and she leaves you and you come to me with this story and I swear, Quentin, I've lost all faith in the human race. I've got only one question. Is there any way you can get my wife to disappear off the face of the earth? No, no, I don't mean that."

"I don't know if this is what you had in mind, Wayne, but at least you made me remember that I'm not the only guy in the world with problems."

"That's not what I had in mind. I don't know what I had in mind. I didn't really have anything in mind. I guess I am a getting-it-off-my-chest kind of guy."

"Why don't you divorce her?"

"Because she's still a good mother when she's home. And I love my kids. And I love my wife. Or at least I love what I thought she was."

"I love what I thought Madeleine was, too."

"Yeah, but at least your wife didn't exist." Wayne laughed but it caught in his throat. "Why aren't we drinkers, Quentin? Guys who drink can go to a bar at a time like this."

"Is Swensen's open? We can eat like a hundred scoops of ice cream and puke in the street."

"Well, that's half the fun of drinking, at least."

Quentin got up. "I'm sorry I spoiled your dinner with your wife."

"Yeah, well, maybe I would've stuck a fork in her eye, so you probably saved me from going up on assault charges."

"I hope nothing ever happens that's weird enough to make you believe me, Wayne."

"I hope the same thing. But I still like you and care about you and I'm the best lawyer you'll ever get, especially now that you're a complete loon."

"Thanks, Wayne."

"Come in tomorrow after two to sign the papers getting her name out of your will and off your policies. You'll have to eat the ice cream alone."

And that was that. Somebody else knew the truth—somebody alive—even if he didn't believe it. Now it was just a matter of waiting. For his investigation to lead him somewhere. For the police to start getting suspicious of him. The trouble was that all he was likely to come up with was negative evidence—nobody knew her, nobody had seen her. But there was a paper trail. The User couldn't alter the paper trail. At least he didn't think she could. She dealt in illusions, in getting people to do what she wanted. She hadn't actually changed physical reality one bit. If she wanted that house to look clean, she could fool people. If she wanted it to be clean, somebody had to come in with a mop. The same applied to documents and records. It wasn't easy to fake a life. This Ray Cryer could be exposed. It could be proved, eventually, if he spent enough money, that Madeleine Cryer had never been born.

Which wasn't to say that the User would stay defeated. If one attempt failed, she'd make another—he knew that about her now. She needed him, for some reason. Needed him. And as long as she needed him, she would keep coming at him, and he'd never know it was her. He could never trust anybody again.

That was the worst. Knowing that the User could come at him however she wanted, in any disguise. He'd never guess it was connected to her. After all, there hadn't seemed to be any connection at all between his sightings of Lizzy and meeting Madeleine at the grande dame's party. Every single person he ever met for the rest of his life, he'd have to wonder if it was really the User, trying again and again.

In the long run, he wasn't going to get out of this until he found the User herself and confronted her. The night before, he had imagined, in his rage, finding the User's mortal body and putting a .45 slug in her head. Now, in the light of day, did he really have the heart for that? Was he a murderer, just waiting for the right provocation? He shuddered at the thought. There had to be a way to defeat her short of killing her. To get her out of his life.

Of course, the simplest way would be to go back to New York and open the damn box.

Only he didn't want to do that. If only because the User wanted it so much. Whatever was in there, it would be a very bad thing if the User got it. Because the User loved power, didn't she? That part of Madeleine, that disturbing part of her—that was the User talking. It had to have been. Certainly she didn't find it in Lizzy, or in Quentin's image of the perfect woman. That had been the User telling the truth about herself. The love of power. Whatever was in that treasure box was about power, and if there was one sure thing in this whole business, it was that the User should not get her hands on more power.

Power. Madeleine had told him that she was in Washington in order to be around power, to get some kind of influence. Was any part of that true? The User must have noticed him somewhere, and it was after he moved to the DC area that he started seeing things—Lizzy, and then Madeleine. The User might have grown up in the Hudson River Valley, but that house had been closed down for years. She had to be living somewhere, and it made sense that it was in the DC area. And if she lived there, somebody knew her.

He made a connection. The grande dame's party, where he met Madeleine. There was someone in DC who had known Madeleine before he did.

But he wouldn't send one of his investigators to talk to the grande dame. He owed her more civility than that. He'd go and talk to her himself.