by R. L. Stine
“Annie, please—”
Her features tightened into a cold mask. “What did you do?” she demanded, lowering her voice to a growl. “Did you come on to him? That’s it, isn’t it. You stuck your tits in his face and came on to him. Why, Lin? I thought I was your best friend. All those guys, and you have to have Lou, too?”
I could see I was getting nowhere. I wished I hadn’t brought Lou up at all. I suddenly felt so weary. I knew I was right about Lou. But I had to stop this argument. I had to calm Ann-Marie.
“Sorry,” I whispered. I reached out to her, but she turned away, crossing her arms in front of her. “I guess I took it wrong,” I said. “He was trashed, and I was so tired. I’m sorry. You’re right. There’s no reason to suspect Lou. I’m just so scared, Annie. Please be understanding. Please—I really need a friend now. Don’t be angry. I had it all wrong.”
Her expression softened. “Lou is a sweetheart, Lin. I know he’s gruff sometimes. Maybe he’s cruder and less sophisticated than your friends. But he’s a sweet guy, and I’m crazy about him.”
“Sorry,” I whispered again. “I need to sleep. I know I’ll think a lot clearer in the morning. Please forgive me, Ann-Marie. Please. I’m so sorry.”
She nodded, but without warmth.
That was totally stupid of me, I thought. Now Ann-Marie will be up all night, angry at me, wondering about Lou.
The police can wait till tomorrow morning, I decided. I climbed into bed and pulled the sheet and blanket up to my chin.
That was so stupid. So totally stupid.
But I knew I was right.
Why did you do it, Lou?
21
I awoke a little after nine, warm yellow sunlight pouring over my bed. I sat up groggily, knowing I had something to feel uneasy about, not quite remembering.
The open dresser drawer brought it all back.
I showered, put on a pair of baggy, khaki Banana Republic shorts and a turquoise pullover, tugged on a matching turquoise hair scrunchie and fixed my hair into a ponytail.
I checked Ann-Marie. She hadn’t moved—still facedown on the bed, breathing noisily. Luisa hadn’t come home. Probably hooked up with some guy she met at the bar.
I gulped down a glass of orange juice, drank it too fast. I shut my eyes against the pain in my forehead. When it subsided, I stared at the blank, white refrigerator across the room and tried to make a list in my mind, a list of my thoughts:
It definitely could have been Lou. He opened the bedroom window to make it look as if someone came from outside. But was he carrying a bag or anything?
I never should have told Ann-Marie my suspicion. I should have checked it out first. Got to confront Lou. That’s the best way to handle it. But will he only deny it?
What if I’m wrong? Lou frightened me last night, and said such ugly things, and seems the likely thief. But I’ve never said yes to him before. Why would he write for me to keep on saying yes?
I wasn’t thinking clearly last night. Lou might not be the one.
And it couldn’t be Shelly. I was with him the whole time last night. He was barely out of my sight for a minute.
So who does that leave?
Last night I’d felt so certain it was Lou, it had been comforting in a way. I had it solved. No problem. But this morning, in the light of day, as they say, I realized I didn’t know anything.
Ann-Marie was right. I had no choice but to call the police. I found my phone directory and punched in the number of the Eighty-second Street station.
Tommy came on the line after only a few minutes’ delay. He seemed very surprised to hear from me again. “I didn’t think the phone message you played for me last week was serious, Lindy. Guess I was wrong.”
Yeah, guess so, Tommy.
Half an hour later, I was sitting in a folding chair in front of his gun-metal-gray desk, watching him scratch his thinning hair as he read the intruder’s letter. He was wearing a faded yellow, short-sleeved sports shirt, open at the neck, and khaki Dockers. “I’m not really on today,” he explained when he ushered me inside the cubicle-sized office. “But what the hell? Where else do I have to go?”
I laughed and then realized he didn’t mean it to be funny. The hangdog expression and stooped posture were new. When Ben was his partner, Tommy seemed a lot sharper, more alive. Maybe he had just been younger.
He read the letter a couple of times, wrinkling and un-wrinkling his forehead. When he finished, he examined the paper, as if it would reveal some important clue.
“Too bad he didn’t handwrite it,” he said. He lifted the cardboard coffee cup off his desk, saw that it was empty, and tossed it into the trash basket next to me. “Sometimes they handwrite ’em, and it’s a real help.”
“So, are we taking this one seriously?” I asked. I shifted my weight on the folding chair. I felt awkward sitting there in front of the cluttered desk. I didn’t know what to do with my hands.
Tommy nodded. “Well, we have a crime here. We have to take it seriously. It’s breaking and entering. And there’s a theft. And a death threat. Yeah, that’s serious. I’ll get a couple crime scene boys over there this morning. They’ll do a thorough job.”
He frowned and picked up the letter again. “So the window was wide open onto the fire escape. Check?”
“Check.”
“And the dresser drawer was empty and left open. Check?”
“Check.”
“And what about footprints? You got carpet in that room, right? I seem to remember . . .”
“Yes. It’s sort of light red, kind of pink. Almost wall-to-wall, not quite. Pretty thin and faded. It was left there by the last tenant, and I was too lazy to take it out.”
“And the footprints?”
“I didn’t see any, Tommy.”
“But it rained last night, right? Actually, it was pouring. So the guy’s shoes had to be wet.”
I shrugged. “I’m pretty sure I would have noticed. I didn’t see any prints. No mud. Nothing.”
“My guys’ll check it out. Anything else in the room get moved?”
“I don’t think so.”
He turned to the laptop on his desk and typed for a while. “Just taking notes. You want some coffee, Lindy? A Danish, maybe?”
“Don’t all cops eat doughnuts?”
“Ha ha.”
Ben ate doughnuts, I remembered. He was so excited when the Krispy Kreme opened on Seventy-second Street. That night, I thought the box he carried into the apartment contained a pizza. Instead, it was six creamfilled and six custard-filled.
“And do you want to hear the best part?” Ben asked, leaning over the box, practically inhaling the doughnuts. “They deliver! I put the phone number on my cell.”
It didn’t take much to make Ben happy . . .
“So? Coffee?”
“No thanks, Tommy. My stomach is kind of tied up in knots.”
“Well, this isn’t nice,” he said, tapping the letter. “But we’ll get the guy. I’m gonna put my best team on it. You already gave me a list of guys.” He pulled a pad out of a desk drawer and began flipping through it. “I have ’em in here. I’ll have to enter them in the computer now.”
He stopped halfway through the little notebook. “Hey, what about the window? Was it locked when you left the apartment last night?”
“I . . . don’t remember. I know it was closed. I usually lock it.”
“Usually?”
I nodded. “But I might have forgotten. It was hot during the day, right? And the only air conditioner is in the livingroom. So I might have had my window open during the day.”
“But not when you left?”
“No, it was definitely closed.”
“And the window wasn’t broken when you found it open last night?”
I bit my bottom lip. “No. The window was fine.”
“No damage of any kind?”
“No.”
“So maybe the window was opened from the inside?”
“
Maybe. Maybe Ann-Marie opened it to let in some air.”
“Lindy, did you ask her?”
“No.”
Tommy typed something on the laptop. He had long fingers and they didn’t seem to fit on the keys. He kept making mistakes and backing up. “Well, we’ll have to ask her if she opened the window.”
I took a breath. “There was one other person in the apartment last night. Ann-Marie’s boyfriend. He . . . well . . . I think you need to check him out, too, Tommy.”
“Name?”
“Lou D’Amici.”
Tommy typed the name into his laptop.
“He’s Ann-Marie’s new boyfriend. Lou was there very late. I bumped into him leaving as I was coming home.”
A thin smile spread over Tommy’s face. “And was he carrying a bag of underwear when he left?”
“You are so not funny,” I said. “You’re not supposed to make me laugh. Someone wants to kill me.”
His smile faded. “So who do you think it is? Tell me. Do you think it’s this guy, Lou D’Amici?”
I shrugged again. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
He leaned closer. I could smell his Old Spice shaving lotion. Ben wore it, too. “Come on. Think about it. You probably have a hunch. And nine times out of ten, it’s right.”
“I really don’t know. Honest. Last night . . . I thought it was definitely Lou. But it doesn’t make sense. I . . . I’m just totally mixed up, Tommy.”
He nodded. “Any one of the Internet guys pestering you more than the others? You know. Emailing a lot. Calling. Any guy pursuing you more than the others?”
“Well . . . Jack Smith. He emails me every day. And he calls at least twice a day.”
Tommy squinted at his notes. “Jack Smith. Twentyfive years old. Has a condo in Hoboken. Works for Smith-Warner-Conyers Public Relations. His daddy’s firm. Never been married. Graduated from Wesleyan with a 2.8. No police record.”
I patted his hand. “You’ve been doing some homework. Thanks.”
He waved a fly off his stack of files. “I haven’t had time to work up profiles on all of them. This guy Shelly . . .”
“Shelly Olsen? You can cross him off the list, Tommy. He’s the only one who couldn’t have done it,” I said.
“And why is that?”
“Because I was out with him last night. He was barely out of my sight from seven-thirty until I got home. No way he could have been in my room.”
I told Tommy how Shelly and I had dinner at the hot dog stand, then went downtown to Whale for hours. The only time Shelly was away from my side was to go buy us drinks at the bar or go to the men’s room. He was never gone long enough to go uptown and back.
“Okay, Shelly has a good alibi,” Tommy agreed. He typed some more on the laptop. The phone rang. He answered it, turning away from me to talk. He talked to another cop for a few minutes while I waited with my hands clasped in my lap, thinking about the two remaining guys.
Was there a clue I was missing? Was there something I should have noticed? Something in my room last night? Something one of the guys said?
Tommy finally hung up the phone. He bent to open his bottom desk drawer, pulled out his gun and holster, then climbed to his feet. “Gotta go on patrol. A guy called in sick.”
I stood up, too. I’d had my legs tightly crossed, and my right foot had fallen asleep. I shook it, trying to get the feeling back. “So what do you think, Tommy?”
He strapped on the leather holster, then slid a wrinkled brown sports jacket over his shoulder. “I’m going to work up complete profiles on these three Internet guys. And Lou D’Amici, too. And I’ll send my crime scene guys to your apartment this morning to check out your room and talk to your roommate.”
He started to the front of the station, taking long strides. I chased after him, gimpy on my tingling foot. “Hey, wait, Tommy. What should I do if these guys call or email me and ask me out? What should I do?”
He turned at the front desk. “Just say no, Lindy. That’s my advice. Just say no to all of them.”
I stared at him. “You mean—?”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Lose them,” he said. “Tell ’em all to take a hike. Tell them you got married or something.” He disappeared out the door.
But, wait, I wanted to say, Tommy, won’t that put me in a lot of danger?
22
I walked home and found Ann-Marie awake, or rather, conscious, hunched at our kitchen table in torn jeans and a baggy, gray sweatshirt, a mug of coffee pressed to her mouth. She blinked at me. She had a row of colored pills lined up in front of her. She takes vitamins and mineral tablets and weird supplements she buys at the health food store. She believes in that stuff.
“Lindy? When did you go out? Where were you?”
“With Tommy Foster at the precinct house. You were right, Ann-Marie. I need the police. I’m really sorry about last night, about what I said. I mean, Lou—”
“Did he really come on to you, Lin?”
Yes, he did. Yes, he groped me and said horrible things about you. But I could see tears glistening in Ann-Marie’s eyes. What was the point in hurting her?
“I don’t know,” I said. “Not really, I guess. I mean, he was so trashed, Ann-Marie, he didn’t know what he was saying. Let’s forget about it, okay? I’m really sorry. I was so messed up last night. Will you accept my apology?”
She nodded.
Before we could say any more, the doorbell rang. Two blue-uniformed officers from the Eighty-second Street station. We spent the rest of the morning with them. One of them questioned Ann-Marie and me, writing down everything we said. He gave me a Crime Report sheet to fill out.
The other one examined my room. He picked up hair samples from the carpet. He dusted the dresser and the window handles with a white powder. For fingerprints, I guess. His partner climbed out on the fire escape to search for clues on the metal stairs.
It was a lot like CSI on TV, only it was my life—and the story wasn’t over in an hour.
Luisa returned home a little before noon, and they questioned her, too. She kept gazing over the officers’ shoulders at me, questioning me with her eyes. I could tell what she was thinking: Is this for real?
When the cops left, they took my answering machine with them. It still had the original message on it, and they wanted to listen to it carefully at the station.
I thanked them and closed the door and turned to my roommates. “I have to get out of here,” I said. “I can’t stay in this apartment one more minute.”
“Okay, I’m ready,” Luisa said. “Where should we go?”
“Maybe a lingerie store,” I said. “How long can I wear this same pair of panties?”
Ha ha. Keep laughing, right?
We went jogging instead, along the Hudson River in Riverside Park. The sun was high in the sky, making the water sparkle like gold, and the high clouds above us glowed silvery and pink, a glorious afternoon. But I kept turning back, looking behind me, checking to see if I was being followed.
I was becoming totally paranoid. But I had good reason, right? I mean, someone had threatened to kill me last night.
I explained the whole thing to Luisa as we jogged. She still hadn’t gotten over the shock of finding two cops searching the apartment when she got home.
“Just say no to them all?” Luisa said, brushing a bug from her black hair. She had a strange way of running. Most people lean forward when they jog, but she kept her upper body very upright, as if she were riding a unicycle. “That’s your cop’s advice? He really thinks the guy will forget you and just go on to some other poor victim?”
“He thinks it’s safer,” I said, dodging a Golden Lab on a very long leash. The dog was sniffing the air, pushing against the tall, wire fence to get to the water down below.
Luisa frowned at me. “I’m not so sure.”
“Luisa’s right,” Ann-Marie said. “Wouldn’t it be safer to keep saying yes until the cops catch the guy? I mean, if the note is serious. If the cr
eep means it, shouldn’t you keep saying yes?”
I sighed. “I don’t know. I’m totally confused. I’m in danger either way, right?” I felt out of breath, my legs heavy and slow. I’d been skipping my gym days. The waist on my bike shorts felt a little tight.
“I’ll bet it’s the boring one,” Ann-Marie said, her eyes on two ducks bobbing in the water. “Jack Smith. It’s always the boring ones who murder people. And then the neighbors say, ‘He was quiet and kept to himself, seemed like such a nice guy.’ ”
We passed the Seventy-ninth Street Boat Basin, white houseboats tethered to the long dock, bobbing gently on the soft river current. A tanned man in a black swimsuit waved to us from a boat halfway down the dock. “Hey, girls—I’ve got cold beer! Come on down! I’ve got cold beer!”
We laughed. Ann-Marie waved at him, and we kept jogging. Above us on the right, music floated out from a café overlooking the water. I took a deep breath. I love the smell of cheeseburgers being barbecued, that heavy, greasy smell. Since it’s outdoors, the café is one of the few restaurants in New York where people can bring their dogs, and I could hear them barking away, begging for cheeseburger scraps and french fries.
“It’s not the boring one. It has to be the one you like,” Luisa said, adjusting her sweatband. “What’s his name? Colin?”
“Yeah. Colin.” I wanted to see him again. I wanted to feel his arms around me again. It couldn’t be Colin. How could I say no to him? When he calls again, how could I say no?
Luisa shook her head. “Big mistake. Your cop friend is totally whacked. He’s setting you up to be murdered.”
“Oh, wow. Thanks a heap.” I stopped running. I glared at Luisa angrily. “Thanks for trying to cheer me up.”
She turned, pulling her headband off, shaking out her hair. “Cheer you up? Lindy, hel-lo. I’m trying to save your life. Don’t listen to that cop. Say yes to these guys. Yeah, maybe it’ll be a little dangerous. But you’ll be able to tell who the creep is. You’ll know right away. And then the cops can put the guy away.”
“Hey, I’m with you,” Ann-Marie said to Luisa, bending to catch her breath, hands on the knees of her tights. “She has to say yes. She has to believe the note was for real. She’s in much more danger if she says no.”