Written Off

by E. J. Copperman

  He was right; that was pretty bad.

  “In Ms. Bledsoe’s case,” he continued, the words just coming out as if he had already written them down and was now reading off cards, “the abduction is unusually subtle. The other victims were reported missing but immediately found murdered at home. Ms. Bledsoe is missing from both her Upper Saddle River home and her beach house in Ocean Grove, indicating she was taken and kept longer. There is a reason the criminal has changed his pattern, but it is not yet apparent.”

  He had then recited various observations from each of the crime scenes, from Sunny’s house, which had shown no sign of any serious altercation, to the newest data (as Duffy would call it, despite the fact that it was all from his own mind) from the house in Ocean Grove, with its incongruous card table and folding chairs—really not the kind of place a woman like Julia, whose books had achieved a very high level of success, would usually be expected to own. “It is odd that she chose that house for her writing retreat and that she had clearly been there recently but had not seemed to do much more than exist there. Even the backyard did not show signs of much activity, and that would have been the route to the beach, surely one of the draws for Ms. Bledsoe to make the drive down.”

  He had never speculated on the kidnapper’s motive or any possible identity for the criminal. I knew he wouldn’t; that Holmesian brain would never admit any thought that hadn’t been created from facts. Guessing was simply not something Duffy Madison would ever do.

  And whoever this guy was, he clearly knew all about what Duffy Madison would and would not do.

  Now in the Bergen County parking lot, I could put away the note pad and accept his compliment. “I am happy to be of help,” I said, and to some degree I meant it. “I’ll type these notes up and e-mail them to you tomorrow morning; how’s that?”

  “Oh, that’s no good,” he answered.

  I had been reaching for the door handle; now I stopped and regarded him. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Ms. Bledsoe has not yet been found. Every minute counts.” His tone indicated that I was no longer the brightest third grader in the class.

  “And my typing up the notes is going to get her rescued faster?” I knew he was crazy. Now the deep psychosis was going to come out. I reached for the door latch again.

  “Of course not,” Duffy said. “Type up the notes at your leisure. But you can’t leave now. We have work to do. I want you to lend the same expertise at Ms. Bledsoe’s home in Upper Saddle River. It’s possible there is something there that I missed, as well. And that might get her rescued faster.”

  “Upper Saddle River?” I moaned wearily. “That’s got to be a half-hour drive.”

  “Thirty-three minutes,” Duffy corrected. It occurred to me to mention that specificity might not be the most important thing at this moment. “Assuming there isn’t much traffic.”

  “You can’t be serious.” Then I realized he was about to inform me that he was nothing but serious, and I cut him off at the pass. “If you wanted me to go with you to Sunny’s house in Upper Saddle River, why did you bring me back here?”

  Duffy looked uncomfortable. “I thought you might want to get your car or need to go home to freshen up,” he said. “Ladies do that, don’t they?” Maybe he really was four years old. Had I ever written a love interest for Duffy? Now that I thought about it, the answer was no. He’d probably never had anything but a professional conversation with a woman in his “life.”

  “Well, it’s always welcome, but if we’re going to—” I caught myself. “Hold on. I’m not going anywhere with you anymore. You’re the consultant with the cops. Go consult. I’m a mystery writer. I have revisions that need to get done. Call me with any updates, and good night, Mr. . . .”

  “Madison. Duf—”

  “Whatever.” This time I opened the car door and got out. And I was about to slam it, harder than I probably should, when a wave of guilt, probably sent across thousands of miles by my mother telepathically, hit me between the eyes. I turned back and looked at Duffy. “Look, there’s nothing at Sunny’s house that I could see if you didn’t see it. If you really believe that I am responsible for your existence, then you have to believe it the whole way. That means I can’t know anything you don’t. So I’m sure you didn’t miss a thing. Just keep on investigating. Duffy Madison hasn’t ever failed to find the missing person.” I closed the car door, respectfully and quietly. “Good night,” I repeated.

  He probably wouldn’t have heard me, but he was in the process of lowering the passenger window. “I saw the table and the dust in Ocean Grove. You interpreted them. You’re the writer. You have the same sensibility as the victim here. You can help.”

  The fatigue that had set in was too strong. I shook my head. “Not tonight, Duffy. I don’t have anything left in me. You keep working the case tonight without me. I guarantee you’ll make more progress that way, and I bet by the morning you will have found Sunny Maugham. Meanwhile, I’ll get your notes together. If you still feel like you need me in the morning, go ahead and call, okay?”

  He looked like a disappointed puppy, but he nodded once. “Fair enough. You’ve already gone above and beyond the call of duty. Thank you for your help, Ms. Goldman. I’ll call you tomorrow morning either way, if that’s all right.”

  I assured him it was, then turned and walked to my car as his tires crackled on the pavement. I didn’t look back, got in, and drove home without checking in the rearview mirror to see if Duffy Madison was following me.

  Once there, I got out my key and opened the door. Being inside my very own house was the most comforting feeling I could remember having in a long, long time.

  The revisions—I hadn’t been kidding about those—were waiting, but I decided first to put some water on to boil and make myself some pasta. Comfort food on a day when comfort was definitely a scarce commodity. Once the water was on the stove, I opened a bottle of red wine, let it breathe for close to ten seconds, and poured myself a glass. I don’t have a fireplace, but it was July, so that was just as well, and I plopped myself down in front of the TV, put on a rerun of a sitcom I probably thought was stupid the first time it had aired, and luxuriated in the depths of ordinariness.

  When the water boiled, I cooked some penne to the proper al dente, got out a jar of Alfredo sauce, and reveled in how badly I was treating my body. I probably would have eaten the whole box of pasta if those damn revisions hadn’t been calling from the back of my mind. Deadline was less than a week away; there was no avoiding them.

  I got the laptop out of the case I’d been lugging it around in all day, then decided I’d do this right and actually go to my office and the desktop computer I had there. That would feel more like a responsible professional doing work.

  It actually did seem right to work in the office, which still wasn’t straightened up, but I didn’t care about that right then. I touched the R key on the computer, which I always do to wake it up, and sure enough, it blazed to life. Well, “blazed” might be a trifle optimistic. My computer is a few years old. It rumbled to life.

  There were, it noted, two hundred and sixteen e-mails in my inbox, accumulated since I’d left this morning. I knew it would take me precious time to sort through them, but it’s a compulsion. I can’t work if someone is trying to get in touch with me. What if it’s Steven Spielberg wanting to adapt a Duffy novel to the big screen?

  Stop laughing. It could happen.

  Alas, Steven had forsaken me once again. Most of the e-mails were either junk that the spam filter hadn’t managed to, you know, filter or messages from one of the LISTSERVs I joined around the time Olly Olly was about to be published. The lists, for those interested in crime fiction, get an author in touch with people who might want to read her books, and they have been very helpful to me. I also love to get into discussions about my books and those of other writers in the field with the people on the lists. They’re really very respectful and extremely interested in the subject matter—sometimes I feel bad
that they read so many more of the books in my own genre than I do.

  I checked the subject lines on most of the e-mails and deleted many off the bat. Even on the lists, there are books I haven’t read or subjects on which I know I won’t have a pertinent comment. With so many messages a day, one must manage one’s time.

  That left about twenty messages that actually had some relevance to my day. Some were from readers who wanted to make a comment on the latest book (latest to them—I was probably two installments ahead, but they didn’t know that) or ask for a bookmark. I’m happy to send those when I can get a snail mail address. Some people ask for the bookmark, which I always autograph, and don’t give me an address. And it’s so hard to stick those suckers in through the slots in the Internet.

  I answered two or three reader e-mails (and I never know what to say; I’m bad at accepting compliments, but I think it’s bad policy to disagree with people who think my writing is wonderful) and moved on. There was one from Sol, not asking about the newly completed manuscript but hinting that he wanted to know when he’d see it. Sol can be subtle. I shot him back a message that I was doing revisions and would have it for him in a few days, ahead of my deadline.

  Three e-mails to go now. One was from a media newsletter reminding me that my subscription would soon expire—in four months. That got deleted. Let them get back to me in three and a half months.

  The next was from my mother, who reported that she had felt a lump in her breast, correctly diagnosed it as a benign cyst, had it removed and biopsied, and was now in perfect health. That’s my mother. She’ll have a health crisis, go through any amount of suspense having it resolved, and never think that maybe her daughter might be able to support her through her time of need. I would have called her immediately, but it was late now where I was and not where she was, which meant she’d be twice as energetic as me, and that never leads to a pleasant conversation. I wrote a sticky note to call her when I got up in the morning (Mom rises with the sun in Colorado) and secured it to the frame of my computer screen.

  I almost deleted the last e-mail without reading it. The return address, itsamystery@anonymous.com, certainly didn’t ring any bells. But the “mystery” part was definitely in my wheelhouse; it was possible this was another reader who’d just discovered the Duffy books, which is always nice, or someone in the mystery community with a request for something (an appearance, maybe, or a signed something or other for charity, things that are easy to do and make the author feel like a good person). It was worth checking. I opened the e-mail.

  Immediately, I was sorry I’d done that. Sprawled across the screen, as if taken from random publications for a ransom note, were words in various fonts, colors, and sizes. The message read,

  You THINK you CAN FIND Sunny Maugham? Just Try!

  And then at the bottom . . .

  YOU could BE next.

  Even as the word left my mouth, I felt stupid for shouting it: “Duffy!”

  Chapter 10

  Duffy, who had to be a good many miles away by now, did not appear at my door, which was distressing. I stared at the e-mail for a while longer, felt my stomach tighten, and picked up my phone.

  I could have called Brian Coltrane. I could have called Paula. I could have called Marty in the Morris County Prosecutor’s Office, although I’m not sure I have a number other than his office phone. I could have called my father, which definitely crossed my mind, but he was hours from here and would only have told me to call the police.

  I didn’t. I called Duffy Madison.

  There is no way to explain that. I’d met the man who claimed to be my fictional creation only hours before. I was certain he had severe emotional problems or a mental illness that created his delusions. I didn’t know his real name, his background, his intentions, or his reliability. I had no reason to trust him. But he had struck me as so much the character I’d been writing, who always comes to the rescue and always knows just what to do, that my first (and second, truth be known) impulse was to cry to him and make him help me.

  It was a simple stroke of luck that Petrosky had given me Duffy’s cell phone number, because I certainly wouldn’t have asked for it, but he wanted me to talk to his consultant and work on the Sunny Maugham case. Now it appeared I would have no choice.

  Besides, I was scared shitless.

  Duffy answered the phone on the first ring. “Ms. Goldman,” he said. “I’m glad you have changed your mind about coming to Ms. Bledsoe’s home. I can pick you up in a half hour.”

  I’d rehearsed what I was going to say after I got finished hyperventilating, which had taken some minutes. “Duffy, I think the kidnapper knows that you contacted me. In fact, I’m sure of it.”

  In my mind, I could see his eyebrows drop into a concerned expression through the momentary pause on the line. “What makes you certain?” he asked.

  I told Duffy about the e-mail and he did not waste any time. “I’m on my way out the door,” he said. “Make sure yours are locked, and don’t let anyone in until I’m there. Understood?”

  I did, in fact, grasp the meaning of his words and told him so. I disconnected the call and sat looking at the threatening message my computer seemed eager to send me.

  For half an hour.

  How could Sunny’s kidnapper (since there now seemed to be no doubt that was what had happened) have discovered that I was involved in the investigation? I wasn’t that puzzled over his finding my e-mail address; it’s listed on my website with a link (under “Contact” on the home page). Authors have to promote their work.

  I mentally counted the people who would know I had spent the day with Duffy Madison as a consultant to the consultant, working to find Sunny Maugham. I started with Petrosky, who had suggested it initially, and moved on to the sergeant and a few uniformed officers in Ocean Grove. They knew I was there.

  But Rita and Brian knew I was planning on finding out who this “Duffy” character was from the night before. Naturally, there was no reason to think either one of them had anything to do with whatever Sunny was going through; I wasn’t sure Brian had even heard of Sunny Maugham. But they could have talked to other people, and those people could have mentioned it to someone who ended up being the wrong person. The world is a random place.

  Marty Dugan knew I’d been asking about Duffy Madison. It would have been easy for him to find out what case Duffy was consulting on for Bergen County. I couldn’t possibly see Marty as Sunny’s kidnapper, but again, how could I know to whom he was telling his story about the crazy author in his spare time?

  The kidnapper, of course, could have been watching the house at Ocean Grove. He could have been one of the uniform cops, although that seemed unlikely (the other three abductions took place outside New Jersey). He could have been in the Bergen County offices and seen me with Duffy.

  In fact, this person could be anyone on the street, anyone at any book convention I’d ever met, any fan, any critic, anyone who had ever attended one of my book signings.

  And then there was Duffy.

  My Duffy, the one I’ve been writing for years, was beyond reproach. There was no chance, zero, none that he would ever under any circumstances consider something cruel or illegal. He was not violent. He was not angry by nature. He was not at all unhinged. True, he could be excitable in the name of good, and he was not always the most polite person you’d ever met (especially when dealing with those he considered unintelligent), but kidnappings and murders? Never.

  But this Duffy? The one who had clearly appropriated the identity of a fictional character, wormed his way into the favor of the chief investigator for the Bergen County prosecutor, and then found an excuse to confront me with the tale of a fellow mystery author who by coincidence had been helpful to my career and now needed help in the most desperate fashion? The one who had wanted very badly to take me from a small house filled with police officers to another, more than two hours away, where it was a fair bet there would be no one but the two of us in an empty buildi
ng? The one who had thought I needed a break to freshen up? That Duffy? He could be anyone, literally. He could have all sorts of mental issues besides the obvious ones. He could have aligned himself with a law enforcement agency to have better access to public records and crime files. For all I knew, he was not “consulting” with the prosecutor during the times the other three authors were taken and therefore could have been anywhere.

  Why had I called this guy for help, again?

  It was just then I had that thought that I heard Duffy’s car pull into my driveway. Now having convinced myself that the man was a deranged kidnapper and murderer, I went to the door and let him in out of a ridiculous sense of propriety: how could I turn him away when I was the one who had called him in the first place?

  “Let me see the e-mail,” he said the second his foot hit the threshold of my entrance hall (okay, it was a tiny space with ceramic tile floors leading to the living room—you have to call it something).

  “Nice to see you, too,” I said, ushering him into the house and pointing him toward my office. He strode purposefully, just like in the books, through what he must now have been thinking of as “the crime scene” and kept going until he realized he had to wait for me because he didn’t know which room was the office.

  “This way,” I said in what I hoped was a dry voice.

  But if my tone had the desired message in it, Duffy hadn’t noticed it. He walked through the office door and went straight for the desktop computer whose screen was still glowing brightly in the room. (I hadn’t actually turned on the lights when I walked in because it wasn’t dark yet and had neglected to turn them on afterward.) The offending message was still vividly displayed in all its gruesome glory.

  “Aha,” Duffy said, as if that actually meant something. He sat down in my work chair without an invitation or permission but did not touch the keyboard. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of purple latex gloves, which he snapped onto his hands.