Third Degree: A Novel Read online

  “You’re disgusting,” Warren said.

  “You asked for it, you got it.”

  He went into the kitchen and came back with a razor-sharp steak knife. Then he knelt and began cutting the duct tape away from her lower legs. They burned as blood began flowing back into her skin. She held out her hands for him to cut the tape from her wrists, but he shook his head.

  “Forget it. Take off your pants and throw them in the wash. Then we’ll get you some new ones.”

  Stripping off her pants presented a problem, since her pants were the only thing concealing her clone phone. Carefully, she slid them down her legs and bunched them around the pocket that held the Razr, then headed for the laundry room. The pungent odor of urine reminded her of the days when Grant and Beth still wore diapers, a memory that broke loose a calcified layer of fierce maternal instinct. As she passed through the kitchen, she glanced at the wall clock: 2:11 p.m. Fifty minutes, max, until the kids burst through the front door. Fifty minutes to break out of the house or to hurt Warren so badly that she could do anything she liked without fear of retribution.

  He seemed to sense her hardening resolve. He followed no closer than ten feet behind her as she walked to the laundry room, and his gun stayed in his hand. That distance allowed her to palm the Razr as she tossed the dirty slacks into the washer. But this presented another problem. If she tried to sneak the phone to the bedroom while naked from the waist down, Warren was bound to see it. She considered trying to slip it up under her arm, but she could feel him watching her from the bifold doors.

  “Get moving,” he said. “Come on.”

  “Just a sec.” She wanted to check the phone for text messages, but she didn’t dare. As she reached for the big jug of Purex on the shelf above the machine, she slid the Razr onto the shelf and left it there. Just before the phone slid out of sight, she saw 2 NEW MESSAGES on its tiny exterior LCD screen. Her heart leaped, for the messages could only be from Danny, but she didn’t even consider trying to open the phone and read them. That would have to wait. After she got the wash going, she left the Purex on top of the dryer and walked half-naked back to the master suite, trusting that Warren would prefer to watch her receding derriere rather than double-check the laundry room.

  She got into the shower and cleaned herself as well as she could, considering the duct tape on her wrists. Rather than loosening under the spray, the tape became even stickier, a gooey gray mess. To her surprise, Warren hung a towel on the shower door while she scrubbed. She dried herself with it, pulled a fresh pair of panties from her drawer, and selected a pair of stretchy, black yoga pants from the closet—just the thing for sprinting, if she got the chance.

  As she sat on the bed to pull them on, she caught Warren staring at her pubic triangle. He’d always liked her to keep it shaved, and she usually obliged him. But Danny had liked her natural, and she’d been more than happy to please him. Warren hadn’t complained about the difference, though he had mentioned it a few months back. But now he was staring at her mons like a detective who’d stumbled onto a clue that could solve the case of his life.

  “What?” she asked. “Comments from the gallery?”

  “Kyle likes them shaved,” Warren said almost to himself. “I’ve heard him say it a hundred times.”

  “He would.”

  Warren’s eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”

  Laurel sighed, debating whether to be honest. “I just think it’s juvenile the way men want women shaved down there. I mean, what’s the deal? Do you really want a prepubescent girl, and a shaved woman is the closest thing you can get?”

  Warren had gone red. “Your new friend is above all that, right? More mature than the rest of us?”

  You’d better believe it. “I’m not going to dignify that.” She pulled on her panties and then the yoga pants. “What now, General Pinochet?”

  “Don’t act like this is my fault. You put yourself in this position.”

  “Ah. So torture is the new legal remedy for infidelity?”

  “It ought to be. Even if it were, the betrayed person would still suffer more.”

  She dismissed his words with a flick of her hand and walked back toward the kitchen.

  “Back to the couch,” he told her. “If there’s room beside your wet spot.”

  “No more duct tape. My children will not see me like that. And you’re going to cut this tape off my wrists before they come in.”

  Warren wasn’t looking at her anymore. He was staring at the computer on the coffee table as though seeing it for the first time. She felt a sudden compulsion to distract him but saw no way to do so. She knew that look. Warren could be maddeningly stupid when it came to human relations, but when it came to quantitative matters, he could be as smart as a treeful of owls, as her grandfather used to say. She could almost smell the rush of his neurotransmitters kicking into overdrive.

  He started to laugh, sending a chill through her.

  “What is it? What’s funny?”

  He perched on the Eames ottoman and reached for the trackpad. “All this time I’ve been searching for data. I’ve ignored the actual programs.”

  A worm of fear squirmed in Laurel’s belly. Warren was already clicking away, this time with his sights set squarely on her true vulnerability. It took him less than five minutes to nail her. She knew the exact moment, because he smiled like the Cheshire cat, then looked up and spoke with almost obscene satisfaction.

  “Hello, misselizabeth2006. How are we today?”

  Adrenaline blasted through Laurel’s system like a hit of pure cocaine, but she looked back at him like a deaf woman who couldn’t read lips.

  “Don’t even try,” Warren said. “You’re not Meryl Streep, okay? You’re not even Tori Spelling. I want your password.”

  “I don’t have the password for that account.”

  “Jesus! Would you stop it already? What’s the point of denying anything now?”

  “I got that account when I first got my computer. It was free. I used it once or twice, then never again.”

  “Uh-huh. So it’s just a coincidence that I found that love letter in your copy of Pride and Prejudice, and that your Hotmail alias is Miss Elizabeth, as in Elizabeth Bennet?”

  That Warren would know even a single character from an Austen novel stunned Laurel.

  “You can thank Keira Knightley for that one,” he said.

  When Laurel didn’t respond, he squeezed his fists into his eye sockets in some sort of brutal massage, then began stabbing the Sony’s keyboard again. “Let’s just check out your little story, shall we?”

  An almost irresistible compulsion to flee gripped Laurel. Only the memory of Warren firing the pistol at her head kept her on the sofa. The revolver now lay inches from her laptop—and from Warren’s right hand.

  “O-kay,” he said, like a desk clerk locating a hotel reservation. “Here’s the Microsoft file where old e-mail is stored for Hotmail accounts. Your file totals exactly 226 megabytes of data.” He looked up again, his eyes glowing with triumph. “That sounds like about five hundred e-mails to me. With a few candid snapshots thrown in, maybe. Are we going to see some of your personal porn this time?”

  Not without my password, Laurel thought, but her confidence was wavering. Warren was driving her ever deeper into a corner—

  “This file was last accessed two days ago,” Warren said. “At eleven forty a.m. So, you read your love notes while in your classroom at Country Day? Is that why I donated money to get Wi-Fi out there? What were your poor students doing then, Miss Elizabeth? That sounds like negligence to me.”

  Laurel stared determinedly at the floor. The entire dynamic between them had changed, but she could not acknowledge this.

  “I guess I’ll have to figure out your password on my own,” Warren said cheerily.

  The keyboard started clicking again.

  Laurel hugged herself and tried to think of a way to stop him, but nothing came to her. With the screen facing away from her,
she couldn’t be sure what he was doing. But he would almost certainly begin with her birthday, then the kids’ birthdays, then her Social Security number. Then he’d move on to various inversions of those numerals. Warren had always excelled at puzzles, so this kind of thing was very much to his taste. Yet after several abortive attempts to log into her account, he got up, hurried over to his study, and quickly returned holding her copy of Pride and Prejudice.

  “I should have started with this,” he said. “I guess we’ll try Darcy first? Any thoughts?”

  Retrieving this book had been a brilliant intuitive leap, but it didn’t worry Laurel as much as Warren probably thought it did. Even with a copy of Pride and Prejudice to work from, it would take hundreds of hours to ever hit on FitzztiF, the password to her account. She’d created it by playing with the first half of Mr. Darcy’s Christian name: Fitzwilliam. It was an almost childish choice, but the odds against Warren trying that particular sequence of letters were astronomical.

  “I wish I had a PET scanner that could read the folds of your traitorous little brain,” he said with sudden bitterness.

  She pretended to ignore him, but she was rejoicing inside. Trying to guess someone’s password was about as much fun—and as difficult—as trying to open a safe by random turns of the dial.

  “I know why you’re doing this,” he said over the screen. “Stonewalling, I mean. It’s because he doesn’t want you. The letter was definite about that. He used you and then he dumped you.”

  She gave Warren nothing.

  “If he’d wanted to run away with you, you’d be gone, wouldn’t you? You’re just afraid to jump ship without a lifeboat waiting to catch you. You’re gutless. That’s the ugly bottom of all this. I don’t know what the hell I ever saw in you.”

  She knew she shouldn’t take the bait, but she couldn’t let this pass. “If that’s how you feel, why would you care if I’m seeing someone?”

  “Because I’m stuck with you,” he said, still not looking up from the screen. “I take my marriage vows seriously. And I take our children’s well-being seriously. I happen to have the fortitude to stick it out and try, even with a slut who hasn’t got the nerve to bail out without a golden parachute.”

  “Me?” she whispered. “I’m a coward? I’m gutless? What about you?”

  The righteous indignation in her voice got his attention. He peered over the top of the screen. “What are you talking about?”

  “You know. That night on Highway 24. On the way home from the Criterium race in McComb.”

  Warren had gone still. His face was pale but for the dark circles around his eyes. He remembered, all right. They stared at each other over her computer, each recalling the night that had opened a chasm between them, one that had not been bridged since. Almost a year ago now, after one of the few bike races Laurel had traveled to watch. Warren had taken third place, which most riders would have been happy to win, but because it was only a regional race, he had dumped the diminutive trophy in a garbage can and demanded that they leave for home immediately.

  They’d covered about half of the sixty-mile drive when it happened. Flames exploded out of the darkness far ahead, as though from an impacting meteor. As they drew closer, Laurel made out the silhouette of a burning pickup truck on the right shoulder, its nose wedged tight against a massive oak tree. More chilling, she saw a prone form on the asphalt, and it seemed to be moving. She kept waiting for Warren to hit the brakes, but he never did, and before she knew it, they were hurtling past the flaming wreck, the acrid stench of burning gasoline flooding through the AC vents like a ghostly accusation.

  “Stop!” she’d cried, grabbing his arm, but he’d continued on, his jaw set tight. The argument that followed had altered her view of her husband forever. While she pleaded for him to turn back and use his medical skills to save the victim she had seen on the road (much less those who might be trapped inside the truck), Warren had calmly described the risks of such an act for him. Wasn’t there a Good Samaritan law on the books in Mississippi? Laurel shouted. Wouldn’t make a bit of difference, Warren told her, not once the personal-injury lawyers got into it. She’d been sobbing by then.

  “Someone could be dying back there!” she screamed. “Right now, while we drive away. I saw someone moving on the road!”

  But Warren remained unmoved. She still remembered his quiet soliloquy as they fled the scene: “Listen to me. That’s probably some drunk black guy wrapped around that tree. Or white trash, take your pick. He probably never paid a dime for car insurance in his life. I, on the other hand, studied for twenty grueling years to become a doctor. I’m not risking everything I’ve built for you and the kids to try to help somebody who’ll repay me for my efforts by suing me.”

  While Laurel gaped in disbelief, Warren went on, and his words were still engraved in her soul. “I’ve gone so far out of my way to help those people . . . and I don’t mean all of them, you know that. But I drove a blood sample to Jackson late one Friday so a family could find out as soon as possible whether their kid had leukemia or not—he didn’t—and did I get one word of thanks? No, ma’am. Just a blank stare, and they’re gone. No ‘Thank you,’ no payment, no nothing. So tonight, we drive on.”

  Laurel had settled back in her seat and closed her eyes, but the flaming truck still burned behind her eyelids, and the broken body still crawled along the lightless road. The next morning, she read in the newspaper that two people had died in a one-car accident on Highway 24—no witnesses, according to the highway patrol. The couple had been traveling home from the funeral of their grandson. Laurel could tell by their names that they were black. She never looked at Warren the same way again after that night, and two weeks later, she’d begun her affair with Danny McDavitt. Danny, she knew, would never abandon someone in trouble on the side of a road. He had the medals to prove it.

  “You don’t know half what you think you know,” Warren said with eerie certainty. “You think I’m a coward because of that night?”

  “I don’t want to think about that night ever again.”

  He nodded slowly. “That’s a luxury you have, I guess. You think I don’t have reasons to check out of this marriage?”

  She shrugged. “If you do, then you should.”

  He shook his head like a man amazed. “Is it really that easy for you? You can look at Grant and Beth, smile, and say, ‘Sayonara, kids? It was fun while it lasted’?”

  “You know it’s not that simple.”

  Warren clenched his jaw muscles, then got up and stood over her with the pistol in his hand. She watched it hanging beside her head, an efficient little machine of death, dangling like a child’s toy in his tanned hand.

  He pressed the barrel against the crown of her skull. “This is how simple it is. I know you had an affair. I know because you won’t give me that password. You think you’re sparing me pain by keeping the truth from me, but you’re not. You’re making it worse. For me and for you. Be sure you understand that. You’re not leaving this house until I know who’s been fucking you. Do you understand that?”

  Laurel wanted to be brave, but she felt herself trembling.

  “DO—YOU—UN—DER—STAND?!”

  She waited until she knew she could speak without sounding terrified. “I want you to listen to me, Warren. I want you to think about all the things that have frightened us through the years. Everything that could take us away from our children. Cancer. Car accidents. Child molesters. An intruder in the house. We’ve taken steps to prevent all those things. But right now”—the gun barrel scraped her scalp as she lifted her face to look at him—“right now you are the greatest threat to this family. What if I did have an affair? I understand you would feel hurt. But does anything justify this? Would you murder the mother of your children? Think about Grant and Beth for just ten seconds. Picture them in your mind. How innocent they are.”

  The smell of gun oil entered her nose. After a few moments, Warren lowered the gun, bent his knees, and squatted bef
ore her. Seeing a change in his eyes, she was sure she had broken through the anger and pain to reach him. He still looked shell-shocked, but the tenderness in his gaze had not been there before, however wounded it might be.

  “Do you know what a family is?” he whispered. “What makes a family?”

  She nodded, but Warren shook his head.

  “Trust,” he said. “That’s what separates a family from the rest of the world. Blood isn’t enough. They say blood is thicker than water, but brothers betray each other all the time. Trust is the glue that protects a family from the chaos outside.”

  She wanted to respond, but it was coming to her that Warren saw the world in a way that she did not, and never could.

  “You,” he said with quiet force, “have destroyed that. Irrevocably. The damage is done, and I can never take you at your word again. Grant and Beth can never trust you again.”

  “Warren—”

  “Don’t speak!” he commanded, standing suddenly. He looked down at her like some kind of Old Testament judge. “You chose to place your selfish desires over the welfare of your children. And you must pay the price for that. All of us will have to, I’m afraid.”

  “Warren, you’re not yourself,” she said, starting to rise.

  He slapped her with his left hand, driving her down to the floor. His palm had struck her right ear, which was now ringing like the three-o’clock bell at school. It hurt, but the shock of being hit far outweighed the pain. She held up her hands to prevent another blow.

  “Do you think I haven’t been tempted?” Warren shouted. “Do you think I haven’t had nurses offer me any damn thing I wanted, no strings attached?”

  “I’m sure you have.”

  “Not only nurses. Wives of friends, teachers at the school, friends of yours! The signs are always up: ‘Pussy for rent’! Nobody has any honor anymore. Nobody keeps their promises.”

  Laurel stayed on the floor, trying to recall a dark religious strain in Warren’s childhood, but she didn’t remember one. But the way he was talking . . . it was like he’d been possessed by some wild-eyed minister from another age. Or by her father on his worst day. But not even her father would have resorted to violence. He would have gotten her down on the floor to pray until God sent some sign that forgiveness was at hand. But Warren wasn’t waiting for a sign. He saw himself as the instrument of God’s punishment.