by Medora Sale
Never had such a simple meal taken so long to prepare. He turned his back to the counter, cradling his mug of coffee in his hands and staring across the highway at the room where he had left the sleeping girl. Finally there was a slap as a bag hit the counter behind him. “That’ll be five dollars and fifty cents,” said the waitress flatly. He dropped a five and a one on the counter, grabbed the bag, and walked across the room. As he crossed through the broad entrance passage, the bright red of a soft-drink machine stopped him. He dumped all his change in it and added three cans to the bag.
Annie woke up at the sound of the closing door. In one swift motion, he picked her up and carried her into the bathroom, leaving a hot damp washcloth and towel within reach on the edge of the tub, in case she wanted to wash. He couldn’t tell from her expression if she was embarrassed, or resentful, or simply too miserable to care at this invasion of her privacy. She didn’t protest; in fact, she didn’t speak. After he settled her back in bed, she surprised him by consuming her share of the tinny orange juice, the coffee, and most of his toast as well as her own. He opened one of the cans of soft drinks, and left it on the bedside table.
“How do you feel?” he asked finally. He had been avoiding the question, afraid of what her answer might be.
“Not bad,” she said. “Thirsty. But I’m not cold anymore.”
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
She grimaced. “My foot is—” She seemed to look for words and be unable to find them. “Yes. It does. And my wrist is throbbing. But otherwise I’m okay. Just tired.”
He got her a fresh glass of water and shook two more painkillers out of the tube in his first-aid kit. She took them silently, rolled over on her side, and appeared to slip easily back into slumber.
Now he had to put some sort of plan into action before Baldy got alarmed. He couldn’t risk doing it from here. She was asleep again, and he looked down at her, frowning with indecision. Leaving her alone seemed heartless, but she’d be a lot more uncomfortable if he dragged her around the countryside with him. Finally he took out his book and wrote her a note, in block capitals, clear and noticeable, explaining tersely that he had to go out, that he would be back, and that she was to stay where she was. “If things get bad,” he added after some thought, “don’t be a fool. Call the motel office. Lift the phone and dial zero. They will get a doctor. Take care. Robin.” Last of all, he dropped into the motel office, where he paid for another day, told the manager’s bedraggled wife to stay out of the room, and traded in their used towels for clean ones.
Lucas gave one more worried look at Annie as he dropped off the towels before climbing into the car. He stared at a road map, trying to think. If he was going to be anonymous, the first problem, clearly, was stashing this car. He started the engine and headed back in the direction they had come from.
Eighty miles and an hour and thirty minutes closer to Annie’s cabin, he was standing by the side of the highway outside a moderately large town, hitching a ride. A red pickup approached, slowed, and stopped a little way ahead of him. He limped artistically up to it and climbed in. “Thanks,” he said. “You going into Deerton?”
“Umf,” muttered the driver. “Hurt yourself?” he added after a while, pointing vaguely in the direction of Lucas’s lower limbs.
“Skidded into the ditch up that road back there,” said Lucas, almost as laconically. “Twisted my ankle.”
“There’s a hospital,” said the driver. “In Deerton.”
“For a twisted ankle? Naw. It’s okay. Is there a car rental place in town?” The driver grunted, and the two subsided into silence.
In fifteen minutes he was in possession of a new midsize four-door rental car, sober blue in color. In five more, he was standing near the entrance to the New Maple Leaf Grill, on the phone to the city, getting put through to Homicide.
“Inspector Baldwin isn’t answering,” said an irritating voice.
“Then for chrissake get me Sergeant Patterson,” snapped Lucas. “This isn’t a goddamn social call.”
Patterson answered at once. “Jesus, Rob, where in hell have you been?” he asked irritably. “We were—”
“Been? I’m up in the bloody north woods, that’s where I am. Right now. I left this morning.”
“The hell you did,” said Patterson. “We’ve had the troops out since ten o’clock last night looking for you. Baldwin decided he wanted to talk to you. Then he couldn’t find you, and the shit really hit the fan. Where were you?”
“It’s none of your goddamn business, Patterson,” he snapped. “I was off duty. Where I was is my business—personal business, as it happens—and the department can keep its nose out of my affairs. I am not the goddamn chief—I’m a lousy sergeant, and the department can run without me. Everything I was doing is in my reports or on my desk. Go look.” He paused to take a breath. “And where in hell is Baldwin?”
“Okay, okay, don’t get sore. He’s walking in the door right now,” said Patterson. “Just a minute.”
“Don’t say it,” said Lucas, as soon as he heard his boss’s familiar voice. “Patterson just told me. Look, I’m up here in Deerton. I skidded out on a patch of ice this morning, and my goddamn car is in the bloody ditch.”
“Oh,” said Baldwin. He sounded confused. “Are you all right?”
“No, I’m not all right, damn it. I broke my fucking ankle and I wrecked my shoulder and cracked my collarbone. I can’t even use crutches. I am stuck in this goddamn hospital bed, and they tell me I’ll be here for weeks. I just called to tell you that, as of now, I’m on sick leave for at least two weeks, maybe three. And I never got anywhere near that girl or her bloody cottage, so you can send someone else or ask the goddamn locals to look for her. They don’t seem to do anything else around here. You’ll find how to get to it on my desk. Look—I gotta go. The fucking doctors are coming back. I’ll call if I ever find out when I’m getting out of here.” And he hung up, fast, before Baldwin had a chance to think of anything to say. The owner of the New Maple Leaf Grill looked up incuriously, his damp cloth in his hand, pausing in his attack on the counter in front of him. He considered the large, healthy man who had been describing his pathetic injuries and shook his head in disappointment. He had heard a lot of strange stories told into that phone, and this one was a pallid effort compared to some.
Lucas got back into the rental car and headed out to a shopping center on the highway. The weather had changed suddenly in the past few hours; yesterday’s brilliant spring sunshine had given way to flat gray clouds; a chill wind was blowing sheets of old newspapers and greasy hamburger containers around the parking lot. He shivered and zipped up his jacket. The automatic gesture made him consider the question of clothing for Annie. He looked around him. In addition to the supermarket he was standing in front of, there was a hardware store, a drugstore, a women’s clothing store, and a bank. He suddenly thought about all those stupid bastards he had tracked down because of the paper trail of credit card slips they had left behind them and headed for the bank.
Thirty minutes later, he opened the car door and pitched in a bag containing a couple of lightweight track suits, size large, and three flannelette nightgowns, just in case. Flannelette didn’t fit his image of the girl, but then he had no idea what she habitually slept in. Realistically, he supposed that she was more likely to prefer the white cotton she was wearing to black lace. The groceries sitting back there were just as randomly chosen: fruit, various kinds of biscuits and crackers, lots of odd cans and bottles of things to drink, some yogurt, and cheese. Whenever he went searching for food in the refrigerators of the women he knew, that was what he found, and he had to assume that all women in their twenties lived on this sort of thing. He himself could exist on takeout food from the restaurant across the road from the motel. That was something that six years on the police force had done for him; it had made him appreciate availability over quality in the food he ate.
As he drove back to the motel, he was conscious of a sense of nervous dread, the feeling he used to have as a child coming back from camp or visits away from home. When the taxi turned the corner onto his street, he would close his eyes in terror, sure that his comfortable house and his beautiful, impatient mother and his terrier, Bart, would be gone, replaced by a blackened, burned-out ruin, and everyone would be dead. And one time when he returned, it had happened. Only Mummy was gone, not dead, and the house was for sale, not burned to the ground. But this time, at least, there seemed to be no devastation. The motel sulked quietly under the gray sky. The management seemed to have finished whatever it did for the day to earn its keep, and the place was deserted. He pulled up with automatic caution in front of another unit, walked back, inserted the key without a noise and pushed the door open gently. Annie was lying much as he left her, breathing quietly, asleep.
She opened her eyes at the sound when he closed the door. “How are you?” he asked, a shade too heartily.
“Where were you?” she answered. Her voice sounded cracked and dry, but her eyes were accusing. “I was frightened. Someone knocked on the door, and you had disappeared. I didn’t know what to do.”
He carried the water glass into the bathroom to dump it out. “I was shopping,” he said conversationally. He brought the glass back and refilled it from the jug. “Drink it,” he said. “All of it.” He put his hand behind her shoulders and lifted her up a little. “I got you a track suit,” he said. “Extra large. Not that you are, of course,” he added. “But I thought it would be easier for us to get you into it. If it were too big, I mean.”
She almost smiled.
“And while you’re in the bathroom,” he said, “I’ll try to straighten out the bed. It’s a pity I was never in the army. I think I’d probably be a little handier at all of this.” And he picked her up again.
An hour later Annie was asleep, drugged against the pain, looking pale but reasonably healthy. He paced back and forth, trying to pretend she wasn’t there. If they had to stay in this stifling room much longer, he would come to hate her. He brought his map in from the car and spread it out on the battered little table. His finger drew a circle around the motel. He didn’t want to spend his time carting her around the countryside, but he had to find a place where he could sleep, too. He considered the possibilities. None of them looked that promising. He shrugged. One more night wouldn’t kill him; he’d make his mind up tomorrow.
The afternoon was wearing away to a gray and miserable conclusion when Inspector Baldwin slammed down his telephone and jumped to his feet. He walked twice to the door of his office and then back to his desk again, in an agony of indecision. Finally he threw himself out into the corridor, roaring for Eric Patterson.
“He’s not here,” said Kelleher. “He’ll be back later this afternoon. He had a whole list of people he said you wanted him to see. Now that Lucas is out of the picture.” Kelleher looked at his watch. “Actually, he should be back soon. I’ll tell him you wanted to see him.”
“Don’t bother. What did Lucas say to Patterson when he called in? Where in hell was he calling from?”
“The hospital at Deerton, sir. Or that’s what I understood.”
“Bullshit. They’ve bloody well never heard of him at the hospital in Deerton,” said Baldwin. “He isn’t there. I’ll suspend him, that’s what. I’m taking this up with—”
Kelleher looked up from the pile of material in front of him. “Not necessarily,” he said, calmly interrupting Baldwin. “Just because they haven’t heard about him at the switchboard doesn’t mean he isn’t there. It takes a bit of time for information to filter through. Do you want me to try and find out? We could call the locals and get them to check it out.”
“Don’t bother. I’ll look after it myself,” said Baldwin.
Lucas had spent the rest of the afternoon trying not to be in the motel room. He had wandered into the snowy woods behind the complex, finding occasional isolated paths. Each one of them seemed to end in a filthy garbage dump or pile of rotting car metal and broken down refrigerators, and his irritation had intensified. On the other hand, Annie seemed to be recovering rapidly, he thought, with a certain amount of pride. She was even gratifyingly hungry. And that presented the problem of what in hell he was going to do with her when she was better. Not keep her here. His nerves couldn’t take it. And as he walked into the restaurant for dinner, he realized his digestion wouldn’t take much more of this particular location, either. Tomorrow he was going to have to decide. That night he took one of her pillows, settled himself more carefully into the horrible armchair, and fell into a sleep of total exhaustion.
Chapter 11
Rob looked down at Annie Hunter in the cool light of early morning and felt a sense of satisfaction. She didn’t look half bad today. Well enough to be moved to a classier motel, even. One with two beds in each room and a bit of space. Her breathing was a little fast, maybe, and her color a little gray, but surely that was the effect of expectations. Today, he was expecting her to be better; yesterday, he had expected her to be a lot worse.
She was still stirring restlessly in her sleep when he returned from the restaurant with breakfast. The sound of the door woke her, and she cried out nervously.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s just me. Come on, let’s get you into the bathroom.” She felt warm to his touch as he picked her up.
She looked a little better once she had washed, he thought. But after taking a few sips of orange juice and a bite of toast, she put the glass and the paper package down on the table beside her. “I’ll finish it later,” she said. “I’m not very hungry right now.” His expostulations were interrupted by a knock on the door, and once again he chased away the manager’s wife with her laundry cart, handing her some used towels and collecting clean linen in exchange.
Ed Dubinsky was leaning against the open door of elevator three, holding it immobile, waiting for John Sanders to finish reading the directory and figure out where they were going. He yawned.
“Fourth and fifth,” said Sanders.
“Which?”
Sanders shrugged. “Take your pick.” Dubinsky pushed both buttons.
It was a glittering, new, high-speed elevator, designed to reach the twenty-seventh floor at rocket speed, and it seemed to resent the briefness of its trip. It lurched to a reluctant halt on the fourth floor. Dubinsky held the door open again. “How does this grab you?” he said.
Sanders looked out. The door opened onto a wide hall with an understated black glossy reception desk manned by a pale, glossy receptionist. “It’ll do,” he said. Dubinsky let go the door and slid rapidly out after his partner. Their feet sank into the carpet; their sleeves brushed against the pots of plants that filled up that awful blank space between elevators. “NorthSea/Baltic Enterprises are doing all right, I’d say,” Sanders remarked sourly.
“Or they owe a helluva lot of money to someone,” added Dubinsky.
The glossy receptionist was not pleased to receive another visit from the police. She would see if anyone could speak to them.
Out of their shortlist of possible interviewees, it seemed that the person with the most free time on his hands at the moment was the bookkeeper. They were willing to see him first, Sanders admitted, if that made the receptionist’s life any easier, and they were ushered into a glass-and-fiberboard hamster cage badly disguised as a room. The bookkeeper was sitting at a desk, bare except for a new-looking IBM PS2—its screen blank for the moment at least—reading a battered paperback thriller that had sold three million copies several years ago. He was dark-eyed, thin-faced, and hungry-looking, and when he dropped his book down on the desk and stood up, the two police officers towered over him. He sat down again hastily, pointing at the two chairs on the other side of the desk as he went.
“You are Randolph West, assistant financial officer of NorthSea/Baltic Enterprises?” Sander
s remained on his feet, and Dubinsky, with a sigh, followed suit.
“Jesus, is that what they call me?” The thin face broke into a foxy smile, like a dachshund grinning. “I suppose it is. Randy West. I do the books. That’s all—I’m not an accountant. I just try to keep everything straight until the professionals come in. And they do. Frequently.” He paused to catch the atmosphere of the meeting. “And if we’re going to talk, why don’t you sit down? Otherwise I’ll get a crick in my neck.” His voice squeaked, as if he had a case of laryngitis he was trying to ignore; his accent reminded Sanders forcefully of the kids who stole and bullied and fought their way out of his old neighbourhood. Like him. Sanders pushed back one of the chairs and sat down.
“Doing the books here doesn’t seem to involve a whole lot of work,” said Sanders in a noncommittal voice. “Is that all you do?”
Randy looked over at him in astonishment. “Where in hell have you guys been lately?” he asked. “On Mars?”
Sanders shook his head. “On leave.”
“Ah. That explains it. See this desk?” Neither one responded. “Empty. See those computers out there, with no one sitting in front of them? Locked.”
Sanders looked out the glass wall to his right. “Things do look quiet out there,” he observed. “Mostly.”
“Oh, you mean that guy. He’s not one of ours. He’s from the solicitor general’s office. An accountant. And a computer whiz. He’s going through our computer files. A week ago—the day after the boss died—these guys came in and sealed up everything. Walked out with all my books, all the financial records they could carry, and left shit-face, the ball-less wonder out there, to plow through the rest.”