A Perfect Life

by Mike Stewart

  “What?”

  “Start screaming. Run out into the hallway. I'll give you a couple of seconds head start and run out behind you.”

  “They'll shoot you.”

  “No, they won't. Just say you were working late and I came in. I'll give myself up. It'll be fine. Don't worry. Soon as I lay eyes on the cops, my hands are going in the air.” Natalie shook her head as Scott spoke. Then they both froze as a loud knock echoed in the hallway. He whispered, “Go! They're here.”

  “It was next door.”

  “But they'll be here . . .”

  “Drop your pants.” Natalie began to unbutton her blouse. Scott watched without understanding. “Now!” Her blouse was open. She yanked it off one shoulder.

  Now he understood. “You sure?”

  “Get over here.” She reached out to pull Scott close as he undid his belt then worked the clasp and zipper on his new suit pants. She tugged at a loose bra strap—just enough to reveal the rounded top of her breast—and reached up to put her arms around his neck. “Your boxers, too. If you have to turn around, you don't want them looking at your face.” Scott hesitated. She let out a huff of air, then reached down with both hands and yanked his boxers to his knees.

  “What—”

  “Hush!” Her voice a whisper. “Somebody's moving outside the door. Damn it, kiss me.”

  Scott pressed his closed mouth against hers. There was no passion, only fear. If anything, he could feel his manhood retreating—an ancient involuntary muscle contraction made in anticipation of attack.

  Natalie grabbed a handful of fabric at his lower back and lifted the coat and shirt to expose his bare bottom, and the door squeaked open. Scott squeezed Natalie tight around the middle and continued their chaste kiss.

  “Break it up.”

  Scott jerked his head to the side and looked back at two grinning cops. “Get out of here!” Natalie continued to hold tight to his coat and shirt, making sure Scott's full moon eclipsed any interest the two might have in his face.

  A female voice came from the doorway. “She works here, Officer.”

  “What about him?”

  The same woman simply said, “Please.”

  One of the cops unfolded a fuzzy photocopy of Scott's Harvard yearbook picture. Still maintaining a semirespectful distance, he held it up, comparing the wild-haired, bespectacled academic in the photo to the pantless yuppie before him.

  “This your boyfriend, ma'am?”

  “What's it look like?”

  “Okay, okay.” The cop turned to the door. “You two, go get a room. And, for God's sake, buddy, pull your pants up.”

  Scott reached down to tug at his boxers, and both cops took the opportunity to check out Natalie's bra. She spat words at them. “Get a good look?”

  There was no apology, just laughter, and they were gone.

  Scott had his pants up. Natalie looped the loose bra strap over her shoulder and pulled on her blouse. “Follow me.” She walked quickly past Scott and out the door, buttoning her blouse as she went. He grabbed half a dozen e-mail printouts off a nearby desk and ran to catch up.

  Nighttime traffic flowed along both sides of Natalie's old ragtop Saab, the headlights of every oncoming car momentarily dividing her face into bright planes and hard shadows. Scott tried to look elsewhere, mostly watching ugly queues of fast food joints, service stations, and strip malls roll by.

  They both were silent. Scott was buried in his thoughts, Natalie in hers. Occasionally, Scott glanced over to catch her watching him out of the corner of her eye. She was, he thought, carrying on an internal debate over what, exactly, to do with her fugitive cargo.

  She clicked on her turn signal, and a sickly green pulse highlighted her face. Sliding expertly through traffic into a slot in the rightmost lane, Natalie braked and cut into the parking lot of a twenty-four-hour Kinko's. She pushed the transmission into park and cut the headlights.

  Seconds passed. Scott asked, “Is this where I get out?”

  Natalie nodded absently, as if agreeing with some internal thought rather than Scott's question. “I need copies of those e-mails.”

  “Can I ask why? The text of all these is nothing but a list of numbers separated by commas.”

  “No, you can't. I think you owe me at least that much.”

  “You're right.” He stepped out into cold night air and swung the door shut. No sooner had the latch clicked into place than he heard Natalie lock the doors. He walked around to the front bumper and tried to see her face through the windshield, but the interior was hidden by ugly reflections of red and blue neon. Scott turned and walked into the building, fully expecting that he would be left alone the second the door shut behind him.

  He used a self-service machine to make three copies of each e-mail. After paying a sleepy college student behind the counter, he stepped back out into the parking lot. Natalie's Saab was still there, and he was surprised by how extraordinarily relieved and grateful he felt.

  Scott tapped on the passenger door, and the electric window lowered two inches. He leaned down to peer inside.

  “Hand me the copies.” Her voice sounded muffled through the tiny opening. He hesitated, and she added, “Do you want my help or not?”

  Scott separated out one full copy of the e-mails and fished the stack of pages through the window. “What now?”

  “You got a pen?”

  “Yeah.” He reached into the suit jacket's inside pocket.

  Natalie told him her phone number. As he jotted numbers, she said, “See that Omelette Shoppe, like three or four blocks down?”

  He turned to look and nodded.

  “Go get some dinner. In thirty minutes, call my number. You do have a cell phone, don't you?”

  “No, but I can find a pay phone.”

  She sighed. “Here.” A stainless flip phone jutted through the window. Scott took it. She pointed a finger at him. “Remember. Half an hour. Maybe I'll know something by then. Maybe not. But call, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  The window went up, and she drove away without saying good-bye. Scott stood in the freezing parking lot, watching her taillights recede and realizing that any feelings of calm or relief he'd had were disappearing down that ugly street along with the person of Natalie Friedman.

  Kate Billings watched waves lap the pebbled beach. She reached for a glass on the patio next to her chair, picked up the cold tumbler, and tilted Charles Hunter's good scotch onto her tongue. Through a huge window that let in to the living room, she could see Sarah stretched out on the floor working on a project for school. The kid had called it a diorama of the Lost Colony. It looked like nonsense to Kate—nothing but a shoe box with colored paper and plastic figures glued inside. But the ten-year-old was quiet. That was good. Sarah's father would call soon, and Kate would quickly remind Sarah to keep their secret.

  Sarah had turned out to be a natural sailor, piloting her little Sunfish halfway across the bay and back without incident as Kate watched from the dock.

  Kate had fantasized about a more interesting day—one with distraught and hurried calls to the Coast Guard and, later, to Sarah's father. It hadn't happened that way, of course, but she had plenty of time. It was too early anyway. Another lost child might have pushed Charles over the edge. Kate glanced in again at Sarah, and the aftertaste of Charles's Longmorn scotch turned bitter on her tongue. She made a face, swirled ice and whisky in her glass, and killed her drink.

  “Are you at the Omelette Shoppe?”

  Scott looked around the dark urban park. “No.”

  Natalie Friedman asked, “Why not?” When he didn't answer, she sighed. “You think I was sending the cops to get you? I mean, after I got you out of the hospital?”

  Every syllable he uttered sounded too loud in the deserted park. Each word struck Scott as an invitation to unseen dangers. “People have second thoughts. I couldn't blame you.”

  “And I did lock you out of my car.”

  “Well . . . yeah.”r />
  “I needed to check some things. I called somebody I work with, somebody who I thought might have an old e-mail roster.” She hesitated. “Those e-mails you printed off, they went to a valid address. One in the psych department.”

  “Who?”

  “Do you have money for a cab?”

  “Who was it?”

  “Do you have money?” Her voice grew insistent.

  “Yes.”

  “Come to 1238 Bittermeyer. It's an old quadraplex. I live in the back right corner. Apartment C.”

  “I'll get a cab.” Scott coughed. “But please give me the name now.”

  Natalie let some time pass. She said, “I'll see you in a few minutes,” and hung up.

  Scott sat on the bench and breathed in cold air. His forehead ached where the watcher had planted an elbow. Somewhere across town, Cindy Travers lay in a hospital bed, working through her own set of problems; Peter Budzik's corpse awaited the coroner's knife and—Scott imagined—Click was working harder than ever to ruin his life.

  This was a lonely place. Scott let his eyes scan the park and then move to the teeming street to the east. He wondered if the wax-faced watcher was there, wondered who else might be out there watching and following. He got to his feet. The bench had been cold. His legs were stiff and sore. It was around dinnertime. Lots of traffic. He'd get a cab easily enough, and then, if Natalie was telling the truth, he'd finally get a name. Hell, he'd get the name.

  Stamping his feet to get the blood flowing, Scott walked stiffly over frozen ground in the direction of streaming, rush-hour traffic.

  CHAPTER 31

  The two-story brick building looked to be at least a century old, but it had been a well-tended century. Manicured boxwoods lined the bottom floor. Freshly painted shutters flanked every window. The front entrance was bright and welcoming.

  Scott pushed a buzzer labeled C.

  “Yes?”

  “It's Scott.” The door clicked, and he pushed through into the central hallway. Apartments A and B were immediately inside the foyer, on his right and left. Scott continued down the hall, and the back right door swung open. Natalie stood in the doorway, her clothes casual now, her hair soft and loose.

  As he approached, she tried a weak smile. “I was worried about you. Did you get something to eat?”

  He shook his head as he stepped past her into the apartment. “Not yet. I needed to think about . . . things.”

  Natalie closed the door and turned to face him. “Like whether I was sending the cops to the Omelette Shop to arrest you?”

  “Like whose e-mail address kept popping up at the hospital.”

  “Have a seat.”

  Scott could feel anger pushing blood into his face. He pushed back against emotions that had less to do with Natalie than almost anything else. But he wanted a name. “I need to know who Click was contacting in the psych ward at the hospital.”

  Natalie circled around to an overstuffed chair and waved her hand at the sofa. Scott walked over and dropped onto soft cushions. Natalie sat down, crossed her ankles in the chair, and leaned forward. “Just so you'll know I'm right, let me quickly explain something.” Her eyes examined Scott's face, and the irritation registered. “I said quickly. It'll help. Okay?” She took a breath. “Like pretty much every company on earth, the hospital has a procedure for assigning e-mail addresses. You can't just let people choose whatever they want, like at home. It'd be chaos. So the hospital uses a combination of letters from the employee's name and a department code number. Specifically, we use the first four letters of the last name, followed by the department code, followed by the first letter of the employee's first name. Sounds complicated, but—”

  Scott cut her off in midsentence. “It was . . . bill-thirteen-k at boston hospital dot com. If thirteen is the psychiatry department”—he stumbled as his mind tripped over the idea—“Click was writing to Kate Billings.” His eyes bounced around the room, then locked into Natalie's. “That's it, isn't it?”

  Natalie nodded. “That's it, but what does it mean? Who is Kate Billings? She wasn't on my e-mail list because her name was automatically expunged when she terminated her employment at the hospital.”

  “She was Patricia Hunter's private nurse.” Scott rose to his feet and walked around the room, stopping at a window overlooking a small courtyard. “I went to her for help. We slept together the night before she left Boston.” He turned to face Natalie. “After Mrs. Hunter's murder, Kate said she was too upset to continue at the hospital.”

  “But apparently not too upset to boink you a couple of days later.”

  “I thought it was about shared trauma.”

  “For God's sake. What the hell are they teaching you guys over there at Harvard? Snap out of it. Most of the time, sex is just sex. Two people decide they want some and then come up with justifications for banging around like billy goats. With Kate, you just went to a bad person for help. She strung you along, then decided to take advantage of the situation and ride the baloney pony.” She shook her head. “Damn, Scott. How far are you into this woman? Does she know enough to have set you up for the Hunter woman's murder? Are you still in contact with her?” He didn't answer. “Well?”

  A low chuckle started at the back of Scott's throat.

  Natalie leaned forward again. “Are you all right? You're not flipping out on me, are you?”

  A tired grin spread across his face. All he said was “Baloney pony?”

  “Cute.” Natalie wasn't smiling. “There was one other e-mail to a separate address. r-e-y-n-thirteen-o-at-boshosp.”

  “Right. I'd just found a second e-mail from Click to that address when you shoved me out of the way and logged off.”

  “I could have left you there.”

  “I'm not complaining. Just . . .” He picked up the e-mails and thumbed through the pages. “Here it is. Reyn13o. So it's another address in the psych department, and . . .” Scott's thoughts stumbled. “It's . . .” He stopped again to think. “If it were r-e-y-n-thirteen-p, that would be Phil Reynolds, the department head.” He looked at the e-mail again. Natalie let him look. This was going to be hard for him. Finally, he looked up at her. “It's Dr. Reynolds, isn't it?”

  She nodded. “I already checked. The O is for Oscar.” She looked frightened. Her face had gone pale. “Oscar Phillip Reynolds.”

  Scott looked back down at the e-mail. All he said was “Shit.”

  Weak morning light floated through gauze curtains. Scott's whole body felt cramped. He tried to turn over, rolled off Natalie's sofa, and hit the carpet with a thud. A gravelly moan followed the fall. He gripped the edge of the coffee table and got to a sitting position.

  He was rubbing his eyes, and considering the probability of achieving a full upright position, when Natalie's bedroom door opened. “You okay?”

  “I'm alive.”

  “Good to know.” Natalie walked into the living room and leaned down to click on a lamp. Her eyes moved over her rumpled guest, and she looked amused. “You've looked better. That I-didn't-shave-this-week beard went out with Wham!, by the way.”

  Scott tried to smile. “It's part of my crafty disguise.”

  “Umm.” She moved around the room, opening curtains and clicking on more lights. “Worked like a charm. Some guy you didn't even know recognized you from a picture on the nightly news. I'm going to make some breakfast. Go get a shower.” She opened the refrigerator and pulled out butter and a cardboard carton of eggs. “Go! And do yourself a favor: Shave the beard. By now the cops have a report you're wearing one, and”—she gave a theatrical shudder—“it makes you look like an extra on Miami Vice.”

  Scott had been watching her move around the apartment. It had been a nice view. Now he pointed to her bedroom door. “Through there?”

  Natalie smiled, and there was something in it to let Scott know that she approved of being watched. “Yes,” she said. “Through there. Hurry. Eggs'll be ready in ten minutes.”

  Natalie's bed had the look of
being made up by someone in a hurry. Scott walked through into the bathroom, where he found a marble-topped vanity overflowing with tubes of mascara, blue jars of Noxzema, and pastel disks of powder and blush and tinted, scented creams.

  The place fairly reeked of girl. And Scott smiled at the calming normalcy of it.

  Inside the shower, the full weight of Kate Billings's involvement began to settle over him. The thought of sleeping in her bed, of being inside her, turned Scott's stomach. He found himself literally shaking his head to clear the mental pictures of Kate smiling down at him, her round breasts bouncing wildly as she rode the baloney pony. He almost smiled at the perfection of Natalie's expression. It captured his and Kate's sexual encounter—at once ridiculous and crass.

  Kate's involvement in setting him up explained a lot, but it raised a hell of a lot of questions at the same time. It explained how Click gained access to the hospital computer system, how the porno ended up on the psych department hard drive, and, most tellingly, how Click knew enough to frame him. Scott had no doubt that—somewhere between Kate's smile and her bare bouncing breasts—some poor slob in IT or human resources would have told her everything in Scott's personnel file. “No parents, no family. Gee, I don't know why you'd want his social security number, but here it is.”

  Maybe it had been more complicated than that. Probably not. What had Click said in Budzik's warehouse? “Nothin' complicated about it.” Scott turned to let steaming water wash over his skull and face, and Click's words came back. “All we did was junk up some computers with porno, break into your cheap-ass crib a couple times, and rent that house out in the boondocks. Nothin' to it.”

  Is it really that easy, he wondered, to ruin a person's life?

  Reynolds fit in there somewhere. Could it be that someone of his stature would get involved in murder just for sex with a younger woman?

  A draft of cool air cut through the steam. “Natalie?”

  Scott's heart pumped harder. Someone moved in the bathroom. He pushed at his hair, yanked open the door, and stepped out with his fist raised.

  Natalie screamed.