Beth inevitably pulled the car off the road and parked on the shoulder. She gripped the wheel tightly, obviously overwhelmed by the tricks her mind was playing on her. I couldn’t imagine being trapped inside my own head with nowhere to go except where my subconscious led me. In her case, it was taking her for a spin on a repetitive loop that evidently had no end.
She opened the door, exited the car, then leaned against the hood. I got out and joined her.
“None of this makes any sense,” she said exasperatedly. “Why does the house keep popping up?”
“Maybe there’s something we overlooked the first time and your mind wants you to revisit it,” I suggested.
She shook her head. “I’m not going back in there.”
If she wasn’t ready to face what lay in store for us, I didn’t want to push her. The only problem was that we had come to a standstill. I decided that the only way to move forward was to go back to the outside world and poke around a little. Maybe I could find out more about the girl or why Bobby kept turning up in bizarre ways. I could then return with the knowledge necessary to help her. Leaving her alone was my sole hesitation.
“I need to go for a while,” I finally said.
“Why?” she asked apprehensively.
“So, I can be more useful to you in here. I’m running out of ideas.”
“Oh, no. You’re not leaving me. I can’t stay here by myself. What if some other weird shit happens while you’re gone?”
“It’s psychologically draining for me to project into someone’s mind for an extended period. If I don’t take a break, I’ll be no good for either of us.”
“But if you leave, I could go crazy. You want that on your conscience?”
Recognizing that we had come to a stalemate, I ruminated for a moment. “I have an idea,” I told her. “What’s your favorite place in the whole world?”
“Don’t tell me you’re gonna ask me to go to my happy place. I swear to God I’ll punch you in the face.”
“Okay. Then what’s a place that would help you stay sane until I come back? It can be anywhere as long as it doesn’t cause you any stress.”
She crossed her arms like an obstinate child refusing to play along. “No, thank you.” When she realized I wasn’t going to yield, she uncrossed them. “Alright, fine.” She thought about it. “The beach. Definitely the beach.”
“Good. I want you to close your eyes and focus on the beach.”
She let out a sigh and shut her eyes. After a few seconds, her brow no longer furrowed, and a slight smile crept across her face. The houses that infinitely lined the road dematerialized and the farmland horizon transformed into a vast ocean. The ground beneath our feet turned into white sand. The darkness above transitioned back into day and the sun crept out from behind the clouds. A seagull flew by in the sky. The convertible vanished, and, in its place, two foldable beach chairs appeared. Beth opened her eyes.
“Wow!” she exclaimed. “I did this?!”
“You did,” I confirmed.
She sat down in one of the chairs and motioned to the other. “I conjured one for you too.”
“I noticed.”
“So, what do you do now? Fly off in a spaceship or something?”
I shook my head. “I’ll just disappear.”
She nodded. “Come back as soon as you can. Okay?”
“I promise.”
“Before you go, I just want you to know how much I appreciate you. I couldn’t have done this alone.”
I smiled. “See you soon, Beth.”
“You too, Max.”
I withdrew from her mind and snapped back into reality in her hospital room. She looked peaceful, so I stepped outside into the hallway. I checked the waiting room for Linden, but he was nowhere to be found. I pulled out my phone and saw that I’d gotten a text from him while I was in Beth’s head. In typical Linden fashion, the message was as vague as it was frustrating. All it said was that something had come up and that he’d be in touch shortly.
Not wanting to sit around, I called an Uber and went to Bobby’s apartment. Linden wouldn’t have advised it, but I figured I might have a better chance of getting him to talk one on one. Besides, who knew how long Linden was going to be? I had the Uber driver wait for me at the front gate while I buzzed Bobby’s intercom. After no response, I started to leave. But then his voice came through the speaker.
“Yes?” he said.
“Mr. Fugate?” I said. “It’s Max Crawford.”
“I told you to leave me alone.”
“Yes, sir. You did. However, some things have come to light, and I need to talk to you.”
“I’ve got nothing to say. Don’t come here again.”
“Beth told me about the affair, Bobby. She told me a lot of things. She really needs our help.”
Following a long pause, the gate opened. “Come on in,” he said.
The Uber driver left, and I walked to Bobby’s apartment building. I stepped into a courtyard with a pool and well-landscaped sitting area. Apartments faced the open space, the first-floor ones with substantially sized porches and the second-level ones with equally large balconies. I climbed the steps to Bobby’s second-level residence facing the city and went to the front door. I knocked.
“It’s open!” Bobby called from inside.
I noticed the door was ajar and pushed it the rest of the way. I moved into the apartment and through the entryway. I came upon the living room, which, on any other day, probably exuded wealth and good taste. On this particular day, however, the open, half-empty pizza box on the coffee table, dirty clothes strewn all over the floor, and pile of beer bottles made it more like a frat house the morning after a particularly decadent party. Bobby was nowhere to be seen.
“Mr. Fugate?” I inquired.
He hurriedly entered the room and tackled me against the wall. He threw a punch, but I ducked, and his fist went through the wall. He quickly came at me again, this time backing me into a corner. I could tell by the way he swayed that he’d been drinking. I noticed a set of golf clubs nearby and quickly retrieved a nine iron. I held it up in the air, ready to swing if he attempted another attack. He held his ground.
“You’re full of shit!” he slurred, his breath stinking of gin. “You know that?!”
“I know that Beth still loves you. So much so that she pretended to be Margaret just so she could be with you.”
He bobbed back and forth for a few seconds and then plopped down on a rather expensive looking couch. “Why are you doing this to me? Is this some kind of twisted punishment for having an affair? That’s not against the law, you know.”
“No.” I put down the nine iron and sat in a matching recliner across from him. “But attempted murder is.”
“I didn’t try to kill Beth!”
“Did you hire someone to do it? With her out of the way, you and Margaret could’ve finally been together.”
“Once Beth found out about Maggie and me, she was going to break it off with me anyway. I didn’t need to kill her to make that happen.”
I read his mind. Even with an alcohol-induced, disoriented thought process, Bobby made it very clear that he had nothing to do with what happened to Beth. In fact, his brain took him back to the night the attack occurred. He was at home when he received the call and genuinely shocked to hear about it. After he found out, he called Margaret and told her they had to cool it for a while, more out of how it might appear than the fact his fiancée had been severely beaten.
I honestly couldn’t see what drew Beth to him in the first place. She knew he was a liar and a cheater, yet she still had feelings for him. At that very moment, he continued to nourish his deceitful nature by plotting what he would tell the authorities if necessary as well as the senior partners when he returned to work. He planned to tell them that Margaret had become obsessed with him and threatened to hurt Beth if he didn’t end the engagement. As irrational and paranoid as it was, he saw it as a way to get the heat off him completely so he could ensure his long-term place at the firm.
“So, what now?” he asked. “Am I still a suspect?”
“Not for me, you’re not,” I told him.
“Is Beth going to be okay?”
“I don’t know. She’s stable right now but that could change at any time. Is there anyone you can think of that might have wanted Beth out of the picture?”
“No,” he replied despite being ready to pin the blame on Margaret if it came to it. “She didn’t have any enemies if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s what I figured. She’s a good person. Most good people are well-liked…even if they’re not appreciated.” I stood. “Thank you for your time.”
“I’ll see you out.” He got up and blundered over to the door. He opened it to the outside world “Hey, no hard feelings about me pouncing on you when you got here, alright? I’ve been under a lot of stress lately. It’s not something I would’ve done under normal circumstances.”
“Of course not.” I stepped out of his apartment. As he closed the door, I felt a buzz in my pocket. I retrieved my phone and saw that I’d received a text from Linden. “This better be good,” I said out loud and then read it.
Linden: Meet me at the police station ASAP.