Diana was after her, too something to do with that computer chip she'd found on Dietz. But since she'd smashed it up and incorporated it into her painting, she couldn't make a deal with Diana even if she wanted to.
Meantime, Dr. Z was dead. And Tracy, her only friend, was afraid to see her anymore.
As she entered her loft, she felt desperate. She had no one to talk to now, no one to turn to for help. All she had left was her fortress and her prison, the mirror maze below.
She put water on the stove for pasta. Then, realizing she wasn't hungry, she turned it off. She poured herself a vodka, straight from the bottle she kept in her freezer. Then she stood by her window looking out as darkness crept up slowly on the industrial buildings around and the abandoned amusement park across the road.
She wished that it would rain, a soft, ripe, gentle rain that would wash her windows and skylight clean. Then she could go into the city and take down a mark. Except, of course, she could not. Employees at the bars and pubs would be on alert. The police were looking for a killer.
So, even if it did rain, she could only dream.
What was it about the rain? Why did it always fill her with a longing she did not know how to satisfy? Why did rain always make her want to enter mirror world, the magic country of reverse?
So many questions, so many things about herself she didn't understand.
Despite the numerous times she had discussed her fears with Dr. Z, she still had found no answers.
Why couldn't she break away from the mirrors? Would she ever be able to find her real self inside the glass?
Rebecca Bernstein had said something that afternoon that she had found a notation in Gelsey's file in which Dr. Z had spoken of a breakthrough.
She herself had hoped for that, but now the likelihood was remote. Could she make a breakthrough by herself? If not, then who would help her?
Later, when it was dark, and although there was still no sign of rain, she decided to go down to the maze. She had no idea what she hoped to find down there, what secret might be revealed. But she was drawn to it by a force she could not resist. It was as if she were compelled to revisit the site of some particularly gruesome crime.
Climbing down the ladder to the catwalk, she began to tremble. She knew she was truly alone in the world. She switched on the lights, then slid down the thick white rope, aware that on the floor she would no longer be alone, that there she could lose herself among her friends, the mirrors.
She stripped off her clothes, stood naked, then entered the twisting corridor. This mirrored aisle, which led directly to the Great Hall, contained no points of reference. To walk through it was akin to roaming the middle of a forest of equally spaced and identical trees.
The mirrors, each seven feet by four feet, each framed by narrow pillars and angled at precisely 60 degrees, created a labyrinth of endless galleries. Gelsey knew her way through these galleries. She was not confused by the insertion at certain junctions of similarly sized and framed panels of clear glass. But if she closed her eyes and whirled around, she could cause herself to lose her bearings. Then she could become as lost as any first-time visitor.
She liked to do this. It was far more pleasureful to wander disoriented than to rush through the maze with mastery and purpose.
There was an ecstasy to be found in naked bewilderment, a rapture to be savored on account of being lost and confused. To lose oneself deliberately in the maze was to enter a trance-state equal to one induced by the most voluptuous of mind-altering drugs. Space and time became distorted. She was surrounded by flowing fractured visions of her body. Light danced across the silver. Reflections shimmered as she moved. And then, if she spun, a thousand self-replicas whirled, too. She was no longer alone. She was at the hub of a great turning wheel of flickering, sparkling clones.
Once in the Great Hall, the "deceptions" were indeed "infinite." It had been her father's conceit that the confusion of the labyrinthine corridor would give way to even greater perplexity as the maze-wanderer blundered in.
Here, her father foresaw, the images would truly explode.
Here the maze-wanderer would be confronted by a burst of illusions as he viewed himself in mirrors that were crooked, bent, waved and even creased. A person of great physical presence would be challenged by distorted doubles. A beautiful face would be deconstructed. A graceful figure would be cleaved or broken. "I will take them apart," he told Gelsey once, crouching over his workbench, painstakingly bending a sheet of glass. He broke many pieces while trying to create distorting mirrors. When he finally got one right, he would rush off with it to the factory that did his silvering.
Whenever she entered the Great Hall, she expected no mercy. Here the only available images were of herself. Unless she closed her eyes, she could not escape these luminous self-portraits, finding relief only in the distorting mirrors, which, although they presented her with reflections, at least provided variations on the identical likenesses to be seen in the mirrors that reflected true. But these "mirrors of deception" also cut at her eyes. The flawed doubles they offered her were parodies. It seemed to her that by their mockery, they made comment upon her character. They told her that the face she showed the world was fake, that the self she presented was a counterfeit.
Losing herself in here, yielding to the pitiless judgment of the glass, she found herself besieged by visions from her past. They did not come to her whole, but in flashes, splinters, shards. She saw quick reflections of herself at an earlier age, little pieces of her dream-sister: a flare of flesh, a flicker of an eye, a mouth tormented in a silent scream. And there were pieces of her father, too-his flesh, eyes, mouth. But between these tiny slivers of the two of them, she saw flashes of someone or something else.
She turned and looked for whatever it was. She wanted most desperately to see it. She wondered if it was the Leering Man of her dreams. Her father had called it "the creature," sometimes "the Minotaur." It was here, hiding in the maze, visible only for instants when she moved. And so, to induce it to come out, she began to turn in the center of the Great Hall-around, around and around again, twirling, whirling, reveling at being at the hub of a great kaleidoscope, seeking a glimpse of the monster, no matter how quick or brief.
She whirled so hard, so many times, she became lost in dizziness. But as hard as she strove to see the Minotaur clearly, she caught only tiny glimpses before she collapsed in fatigue upon the floor.
Peering around, staring at each image of herself in turn, she wondered if this mirror-madness would one day cease to be ecstatic, whether one day it would make her so crazy that she would be imprisoned forever in the glass.
Oh, Doc, wherever you are-help me. Help me! Please!
The Hunt.
Dr. Isaac Feldstein was not inclined to cooperate. He made that clear by staring severely at Aaron, then at Janek, while sitting very straight behind his orderly and too-large mahogany desk.
Janek stared back, blank-faced, as the doctor told them he did not believe he had a patient whose first name was Diana. In fact, the doctor said, he doubted he even knew a woman with that particular first name.
As for triazolam, yes, he did prescribe it for some of his patients. He also prescribed Valium, Ativan, Dalmane and a good half dozen other sedatives of the benzodiazepine class. Under no circumstances would he reveal his patients' names or the nature of their prescriptions. If the detectives did not understand why he held to this position, they were welcome to discuss the matter with his attorney.
Feldstein, wearing an immaculate white jacket, smiled scornfully as he said all this. Then, as if to reassure himself, he gazed around at the fine appointments in his Park Avenue consulting room.
He was a short, dapper man with an oversized head, thick gray hair and a sharp, jutting chin. As he talked he angled his head back to emphasize his confidence. He was selfimportant, feisty, arrogant-all traits that Janek despised. Watching him, Janek wondered how he managed to keep his patients. But then he remembered that there were people who preferred a cold, imperious doctor. Better to leave everything to the despotic judgment of an all-knowing Great Physician than to acknowledge there were mysteries within the body as yet not understood.
"So, if that's all you gentlemen-"
"What's his name?" Janek asked.
Feldstein blinked. He didn't like being interrupted. "Excuse me?"
"Your attorney-what's his name?"
"Well, I don't really see-"
"Gilford Thatcher, right?"
"Well, yes. But-" "Yeah, I thought so." Janek shook his head with disgust.
Feldstein screwed up his features. "Sorry, Lieutenant, I don't get what you're driving at."
Janek leaned forward. "I've worked a lot of cases like this. Sooner or later we find the person we're looking for. Then, sooner or later, he or she makes a deal. What I'm driving at, Dr. Feldstein, is that when we find this woman, whom you claim you don't know, and she tells us how you prescribed triazolam, knowing exactly what she was going to do with it, I'll make it my personal mission in life to see your license revoked."
He glanced at Aaron. They stood up. They didn't bother to say good-bye.
He took the Lexington Avenue subway downtown, got off at Canal Street, walked three blocks east, then climbed the four long flights to the former karate studio that housed the law offices of Rampersad amp; Rudnick.
This time Netti's young secretary opened the door.
"Hello, Lieutenant." Doe Landestoy beamed.
Janek peered around. Rudnick was nowhere in sight, but Netti was on the exercise platform working out with a pair of chromed barbells.
"Hi!" she yelled. "Be right with you-soon as I finish the set."
Janek watched as she completed her routine. She looked limber and strong. He noticed she was wearing the same ensemble as on his previous visit, except that this time her sweatpants were navy and her white tanktop bore a black German military insignia.