The Perfect Man

by Kristine Dexter

  This room obviously hadn’t been staged for her or Lou’s benefit. This was how Rick had left it when Flegal had come to the door. It also meant the perp hadn’t come up here—or if he had, he hadn’t touched the computer.

  “Why’d you do that?” Lou whispered.

  “Tell you later.” Tasha made her way to the stairs. She went down slowly, making sure the front door was still closed. It was. And she hadn’t heard anyone come inside. As she passed it, she peered through the frosted glass.

  Rick was standing near the porch, hands in his pocket. He appeared to be whistling, although she couldn’t hear him. Interesting. The house was built solidly enough to be somewhat sound-proof.

  Then she turned away from the glass, got her gun out and headed for the basement door. When both she and Lou had reached it, she mouthed, “Ready?”

  He nodded.

  She unlatched it as quietly as she could. Three stairs went down to a landing, and then more stairs beyond that. They disappeared into darkness just like Rick had warned.

  There was a small stick of wood on a shelf just inside the door, obviously meant to be used as a door brace. Beside the wood stood two industrial sized flashlights. She handed the brace to Lou, who pushed the door open as far as it could go and then shoved the triangle of wood into place. Tasha’s hand hovered over the flashlights. Would it be better to turn on the light and give their perp some warning? Or would they be better off using the flashlights?

  If Rick was right, the perp was either stuck outside the office door or in the office proper. If he was outside the door, then he could use the time that the warning gave him to put himself in a good defensive position.

  Of course, if he’d already heard them walking around up there, the flashlight beams would make Tasha and Lou excellent targets, while making them unable to see the perp.

  She flicked on the overhead light and listened for a corresponding movement below.

  There was no sound at all from the basement. But the house was sturdy enough that she couldn’t hear Rick whistling fifteen feet away. She might not be able to hear small movements in the basement either.

  Lou was waiting for her to lead. She gathered herself, cleared any thought of Rick from her mind, and went down the stairs. These steps creaked. They were made of thick boards against slats.

  All she could see at the bottom of the stairs was the concrete foundation, old and crumbly. No fancy remodel here. She made herself breathe shallowly, trying to be as silent as possible. Not because she wanted to surprise the perp, but because she wanted to hear him when he moved.

  She heard nothing.

  The basement smelled faintly damp, like most basements in Oregon did. As she came down the steps, she saw that the basement opened on her right into a cavernous and mostly empty room—one that had not been redesigned with the rest of the house. There was a pantry on one wall, so old that the boards had been leached of the color, and holding some rusted cans with the labels torn off. She doubted they belonged to Rick.

  A dusty drain stood in the middle of the floor and old washing machine pipes stuck out of another wall. The pipes had been capped, the washing machine moved to the upstairs laundry room long ago, but the machine’s outline remained embedded in the concrete floor like a memory that couldn’t be erased.

  The room seemed empty, but Tasha had learned not to trust those feelings. As an instructor had once told her at the police academy, sometimes those feelings came from what she wanted to be true, not from what was true.

  Lou reached the bottom of the steps only a moment after she did. So far so good. No one had shot at them, no one had attacked them. And while they were coming down the stairs, they had been targets.

  Tasha scanned the walls she hadn’t been able to see from the stairs. Metal shelves stood against the back wall, with more rusted cans on them—probably paint that should have been recycled years ago. And beneath the stairs was a single, ancient toilet that looked like it hadn’t been used in decades.

  She didn’t even see the room that Rick said housed his office, and that put her on edge.

  “Tash.” Lou was standing by the metal shelves. He nodded his head toward the side of the wall.

  She went to him. In this space, anyway, there was nowhere for the perp to be hiding.

  The basement was chilly. She felt goose bumps rise on her arms. As she approached Lou, she finally saw the room.

  A fake concrete wall had been built across the back of the basement. It looked like the rest of the room until she got close to it. Then she realized the concrete wasn’t crumbling. It was newer and had been painted to resemble the wall around it.

  The door itself would have been invisible if it weren’t for the tiny electronic display at shoulder level. Even the little keypad, which Rick had told her to expect, was painted a muted gray.

  “Look,” Lou said, pointing to the pad.

  Beside it were gouge marks, and they were obviously fresh. The tailings from them littered the floor. Someone had been here, and had tried to get in without knowing the combination.

  Or was that what they were supposed to think?

  Tasha swallowed, checked the basement again. Empty. And she didn’t hear anything upstairs.

  “Think we should go in?” she asked.

  “Yep,” Lou whispered. “And this time it’s me.”

  He watched the room while Tasha punched the combination Rick had given her into the keypad. She heard a soft click and the door eased open. She glanced at Lou. He gave her a goofy grin, then reached to the left as Rick had instructed, and turned on the light.

  Lights. Maybe a dozen of them, making the room one of the brightest she’d ever seen. The office was huge—as big as the front part of the basement—and filled with desks and bookshelves, and framed artwork, which she recognized as the paintings which had adorned the covers of Jessamyn Chance’s books.

  Tasha felt some tension ease out of her shoulders. He wasn’t lying after all.

  “Shit,” Lou murmured. “Where’d he get all this stuff?”

  Tasha glanced at her partner. He was assuming that Rick had set this room up, like an obsessive would, with Jessamyn Chance’s stuff. As if Rick were a crazed fan, and not the writer. Tasha felt a trickle of unease, but she willed it away.

  She braced her back against the wall and stared at the unfinished basement. Her job was guarding Lou while he went inside.

  She could hear him fumbling around, checking under desks, behind furniture. She hated this part—they were both so vulnerable.

  “No one’s here,” Lou said.

  Tasha stayed in position a moment longer. No one appeared at that moment, there were no rustling sounds. Only her and Lou in this weird basement, standing outside a secret room.

  No wonder the Creep, as Rick called him, thought someone was imprisoned down here. That was what the door made it look like. Who would have thought there was such a comfortable space inside?

  Tasha peered in. The bookshelves adorning the wall were cherry, just like the ones upstairs, only here, one wall of books was just Jessamyn Chance novels. Most of them were in English with various covers, but mixed among them were books in French, German, and Hebrew along with other languages she didn’t recognize.

  One desk in the far corner seemed to serve as a computer graveyard. She recognized an ancient Atari, an early IBM PC, and then a MacPlus. Apparently Rick didn’t throw out any computer he had written on. A MacBook, screen dark, was open on a leather couch. And on the main desk a Power Macintosh hummed, clearly on.

  Tasha went there. Beside the Mac was a yellow legal pad with barely decipherable scratchings—

  Need up-to-date listing of values for last set of Brooklyn Dodger cards

  Why would a woman be a baseball historian?

  Player won’t care until he gets shot at.

  What would he know that makes him a threat?

  She hit the space bar on the computer keyboard and the screen shuddered for a moment before opening. A hal
f-finished letter faced her:

  Isabel Weidler

  Weidler & Krause Literary Agency

  1130 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY

  Dear Iz:

  Still behind on the new book, but the move went well. I may have to take you up on your offer to have Jeremiah Canfield give me a tour of Dodger Stadium. Don’t know when I’ll be able to get to L.A., but I’ll see what I can do to make my schedule match his.

  Can you send me his number? Or give him mine? Don’t know what you’ll tell him about who I am. Maybe give him a list of the old Rick Chance novels, and tell him that this might be my breakout. Or just tell him I’m a client. As long as you let me know what role I’m supposed to play. And before you do this, you might want to find out if he reads Jessamyn Chance. If he does, he’ll probably figure this out a year or two from now, and That Would Not Be Good.

  Thanks for your willingness to do this. Didn’t know how I’d get into that stadium otherwise. They were willing to give me the standard press tour, but there are a few places No One Sees, apparently.

  On another matter, I got a check from your office with the usual paperwork missing, and on the stub this cryptic notation: British royalties. Since all of Jessamyn’s books have been published in Great Britain, it would be nice to know whether this check was for the entire kit & kaboodle (which means I need statements from 3 different publishing houses) or whether it’s for one. (As always, I’m hoping for the latter.) I’d call to straighten this one out, but I want the paperwork, so...

  The letter trailed off as if the author had been interrupted in the middle. Tasha touched the back of the chair. Rick spent a lot of time here.

  Rick, whose alter ego was definitely Jessamyn Chance.

  Lou had found a file cabinet. He had pulled a drawer open and was thumbing through files that were labeled in the same barely legible hand as the words on the legal pad. Lou pulled out one file and put it on top of the cabinet. Inside were papers with a publishing company logo, and below, lots of figures.

  “Son of a bitch,” Lou said. “He is a romance writer.”

  Lou sounded more shocked than Tasha felt. Somehow, standing in this room, made it all real. What kind of man wrote about mushy stuff for a living? She couldn’t quite mesh the writer she’d read with the man she’d danced with.

  The man whose anger had scared a deliveryman out of his wits.

  “We don’t have cause to be searching this stuff, Lou,” she said.

  “Sure we do, Tash. He gave us permission to come in here.”

  “To look for a stalker.”

  “That neither of us believed in.”

  “We believed in him enough to do a thorough search of the house.”

  Lou looked at her over the file cabinet drawer. Then he sighed and replaced the file, pushing the drawer shut. “This is legit, isn’t it?”

  Tasha nodded.

  “We don’t have time for it, not with the Pfeiffer case.”

  “Since when has time ever been a factor in our job?” Tasha could remember one February when they’d had five high priority cases, all of which should have been solved immediately. She doubted she slept more than eight hours a week for the entire month.

  “I think we gotta hand this off to someone else. You’re operating with your hormones, and I...” Lou’s voice trailed off.

  “And you?”

  Lou touched one of the paperbacks sitting on top of a FedEx envelope. It was, Tasha noted, the newest Jessamyn Chance release. He didn’t say anything.

  “Lou?”

  “It just doesn’t seem right, you know.” The words came out in a rush.

  “You’d feel better if he was writing pornography?”

  Lou set the book down. “Actually, yeah.”

  Well, she wouldn’t. That much she knew.

  “We’re already on it, Lou,” Tasha said.

  “I know, but—”

  “I’ll do most of it, and I promise it won’t interfere with the Pfeiffer case.”

  He looked at her. “It better not.”

  His response wasn’t normal. Usually they covered for each other without any quibbles at all. “What’s really bothering you, Lou? And don’t tell me it’s the time or Rick’s job. Are you jealous?”

  “Of him? Hell, no.”

  “I haven’t been involved with anyone since we became partners.”

  Lou’s back straightened. “I’m a happily married man.”

  “I’m not suggesting otherwise,” Tasha said. “But we both know that partners have a special relationship. Are you afraid of losing that?”

  “Tash,” Lou lowered his voice to his confiding tone, “even if this guy checks to one-hundred percent legit, he’s a nut. And you’re gonna get hurt.”

  “By investigating his case?”

  “By staying close to him. Attraction gets in the way, you know. It makes you blind.”

  “You were blind to Sylvie?” Tash asked.

  “You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah.” Tasha moved away from Rick’s desk and headed toward the door. “You mean you don’t trust me to behave professionally in all circumstances.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Oh, Lou,” she said softly, “I’m afraid you did.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  RICK SAT ON his porch steps, elbows on his knees, chin braced on the heels of his hands. He was staring across the street. There’d been a flash a block or so away, as if light had caught a mirror and reflected it in his direction. He couldn’t see what caused it—probably some kid playing—but he had to admit it unnerved him.

  Everything was unnerving him. If Mrs. McGuilicuty’s blinds twitched one more time, he was going to go over there and rip them off her window. That would show her just how crazy her new neighbor was—and cement his position as the neighbor everyone wanted to get rid of.

  The real problem was that it was taking Tasha and her partner forever to go through the house. How long was Rick supposed to wait? They hadn’t given him a contingency plan. If something went wrong—if the Creep attacked them—Rick wasn’t sure what he should do. His brain told him to go to one of the neighbors’ and call for help, but his heart—his macho heart—told him he never should have let a woman like Tasha go in there in the first place.

  Not without him protecting her.

  And he knew that was totally ridiculous. His own heroines—if they had been living, breathing creatures—wouldn’t have stood for an attitude like that. He knew Tasha wouldn’t either.

  He had wisely kept silent about it when she had decided to go into his house.

  But he wasn’t sure how much more waiting he could take.

  Then he heard the front door open. He stood so quickly that he fell over. To his relief, Tasha came out, followed by her partner.

  “No one inside,” she said in that brisk professional tone she’d been taking with him.

  “You been doing work on that electronic lock of yours?” Rassouli asked as he came down the porch steps.

  “What do you mean?” Rick asked.

  “Replace it recently? Try to fix it?”

  Rick shook his head. His stomach was knotted.

  “Well, there’s gouge marks all around it, like someone was trying to disarm it or remove it.” Rassouli was looking at Rick oddly, like he was trying to see through Rick.

  “It was just installed two months ago,” Rick said, “and the whole thing was designed so that you couldn’t see it from across the room.”

  “You were right then,” Tasha said. “He got in. I’m going to call over a forensics team and have them work it, unless you have objections.”

  “You think you’ll find fingerprints?”

  “Never know until you try,” Tasha said. She seemed so cool, so remote. What had changed? Or was this the way she always was after searching a house?

  “Did you go in the office?” Rick asked.

  Rassouli looked down, as if what he had seen in there embarrassed him.r />
  Tasha was the one who nodded. Although her expression became even more remote.

  “Personally,” she said, “I prefer windows. But it is a cozy space.”

  He would never have described that space as cozy. It was too large for one thing. But it was his personal place, and no one had ever been in it before—not here, not in Chicago. No one had even seen the private side of him. Ever.

  He felt exposed. And that exposure had left him feeling rejected by both of them.

  “He hadn’t gotten in, right?” Rick asked.

  “In the office?” Tasha clarified. “No.”

  Rick nodded, feeling relieved.

  “But it looked like he made a concerted effort to get in. I wouldn’t be surprised if he came back—or was planning to come back—with something that would open the door.”

  “Like what?” Rick asked.

  Tasha shrugged. “Any number of things. If he saw what happened this morning, he might have thought he had time to figure out how to get in.”

  Rick ran a hand through his hair. He’d never thought about the Creep coming back. He figured the police would come, this would get solved, and he could go back to work.

  Now he might have to move again. There might not be any other choice.

  “I’m not sure you’ll be safe here tonight,” Tasha said. “Do you have a place to stay?”

  It took him a moment to focus on her words. “I’ll be all right,” he said. “I’ll batten down the hatches, turn on the alarm and dig in.”

  “Well, that alarm isn’t going stop him from coming in if he wants to,” Rassouli said crossing his arms over his chest. “And if what you say is true, that he’s after this imaginary woman, he’s gonna see you as an obstacle to getting her. He’s never come in before, has he?”

  “Into my house?” Rick asked. “No.”

  “Then this is an escalation.”