Robert B Parker - Spenser 21 - Walking Shadow

by Walking Shadow(lit)

  She looked startled and then looked at Hawk.

  "He want you to look, 'cause you a woman," Hawk said.

  "Might see things he didn't."

  "I hope you don't find that sexist," I said.

  Mei Ling smiled.

  "No, sir," she said.

  "Women often see things that men have missed."

  "Good," I said.

  "Let's go."

  Mei Ling looked at Hawk again.

  "Will you come with us?"

  "Drive you over, Missy. Wait right outside."

  I left enough money on the table to cover lunch. Vinnie lingered a moment while he made a cream cheese sandwich with his second bagel, wrapped it in a paper napkin, and stuck it in his pocket.

  "Be glad when this is over," he said.

  "Go someplace and get some actual, fit for human consumption, chop."

  Jocelyn had a basement apartment, down three concrete stairs on the side of a three-story clapboard building near the water. There was a black pipe railing on the stairs, and heavy screening on the windows. The door was painted black.

  Since I had already done it once before, it took me about a minute to jimmy the lock. The room was as I'd left it. If DeSpain had gone through it, he'd done it neatly. There was a bed sitting room, a kitchen and a bath. The bath was tiled. The other two rooms were finished in plywood paneling. There was a pink satin spread on the bed.

  "You should look around, Mei Ling. See if anything appears odd. Anything that should be here and isn't. Anything that is here and shouldn't be. Anything you don't expect."

  Mei Ling stood in the middle of the room and looked around.

  "May I open drawers and closets and things?"

  "Yes."

  She did. She was quite organized about it. She began at the far end of the bed sitting room and moved methodically through it and the kitchen and finally the bath. I leaned on the wall near the kitchen counter and watched her as she worked. Her face was serious, and a small concentration wrinkle appeared vertically between her eyebrows. Her front teeth showed as she bit down gently on her lower lip while she carefully looked at everything.

  "Her makeup is not here," Mei Ling said.

  "Neither is her purse."

  "It would make sense," I said, "for her to have her purse when she was kidnapped. Is it reasonable to imagine that she would have kept her makeup in her purse?"

  "Is this an attractive woman?" Mei Ling said.

  "An actress, one who cares about her appearance?"

  "Yeah."

  "Then, no, sir. She would have had lipstick in her purse, and maybe blusher and a little something to touch up her eyes. But she would not have carried everything in her purse." Mei Ling smiled.

  "There is too much. Her bathroom is not well lighted. There is no window. She would have had a magnifying mirror, perhaps one with built-in lighting. She would have had a hair dryer. She would have had night cream, and moisturizer, and foundation, and eye shadow, and mascara, and..." Mei Ling spread her hands helplessly.

  "So much. And besides, her whole organizer is gone."

  "A makeup organizer?"

  "Yes."

  "You know she would have one?"

  Mei Ling smiled at me almost condescendingly.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Anything else?" I said.

  "I don't know what she had for luggage," Mei Ling said.

  "But there is no suitcase."

  "Yeah," I said.

  "I noticed that too, but at the time it wasn't what I was looking for."

  "Her tooth brush and tooth paste are still here," Mei Ling said.

  "Yeah. But a lot of people keep an extra already packed."

  "What does this mean, sir?"

  "Maybe Jocelyn packed for her kidnapping," I said.

  "Who would let her do that?"

  "Nobody," I said.

  CHAPTER 44

  I was alone in Port City. I needed to think, and I was beyond caring whether the Death Dragons and Lonnie Wu liked it or not. The sky was dark, the wind was brisk off the Atlantic, but the rain was gentle, drifting a little on the wind. I walked along Ocean Street, parallel to the water, away from the theater, with the collar up on my black leather jacket and my matching White Sox baseball cap pulled down over my forehead. I had the Browning out of its holster and in my right-hand coat pocket, because if the Death Dragons did, in fact, protest my presence, it would be embarrassing if my gun was out of the rain, dry and cozy, zipped up under my jacket. Most of the fishing boats were in harbor, and their masts clustered near the shore, bobbing briskly on choppy water the color of macadam, the herring gulls roosting on them and on the pilings along the piers. One of them planed off its perch and snatched a piece of garbage from the sullen water. The thing that had been skittering intangibly along the edges of my consciousness coalesced suddenly. Like a name I'd been trying to think of.

  I turned and went back to the theater, walking fast; in the front door, past the box office, up the stairs and into the big empty conference room galleried with theater posters. I walked straight to the one advertising the Port City Theater Company's 1983 production of The Trials of Emily Edwards.

  Neatly framed. One of fifty, it was a stylized portrait of a young woman with black hair tied to a chair and gagged with a white scarf. She was wearing a black slip and black high-heeled shoes, or, more accurately, one black high-heeled shoe. The other shoe lay on the floor in front of her. The strap of her slip was off her left shoulder. There was no bra strap. Her ankles and knees were bound with clothesline. Several loops of the same rope around her waist held her in the chair. The white scarf appeared to be silk. It covered her face from nose to chin. Her dark hair had fallen forward and covered her right eye. It was identical to Jocelyn's predicament on the tape. She had learned how to kidnap herself, by copying a play poster.

  "Jesus Christ," I said. It came out very loud in the empty conference room.

  I took the poster off its hook and with me as I left the theater.

  Nobody stopped me. No one said, "Hey, boy, where you going with that poster?" No one, in fact, paid any attention to me at all.

  If a detective falls in the forest, I thought, does he make a sound?

  I took the poster to my car and drove home to Susan's.

  When I got there, I went quietly with my poster past her waiting room. For a moment I thought of going in. Excuse me, doctor, but I think I need vocational counseling. Instead I went on upstairs. I put my hat on her hall table so she'd see it when she came up from her afternoon appointments and not be startled when she came in. I let myself in to Susan's apartment with my key, accepted, with considerably more grace than pleasure, three minutes of intense lapping from Pearl, then took my coat off and made myself a double vodka martini on the rocks with a twist. I put my poster on top of the TV, put the video tape in the VCR, clicked play, waited until Jocelyn was on the screen, and clicked the freeze-frame button. Freeze frame was not state of the art on Susan's VCR, but it was sufficient.

  Then Pearl and I got on the couch and looked at the likeness while I sipped my martini and thought about the detective business. Pearl made an occasional attempt on my martini, which I repelled. After a couple of failures she gave up and turned around twice and lay down with her head on the arm of the couch and her butt against my leg.

  I had been in Port City now, with three employees, since, approximately, the time that Hector was a pup. And the only fact I had was that Craig Sampson had been shot dead in front of me on the stage at the Port City Theater. The only person in Port City who had told me anything useful was Lonnie Wu, who had threatened to kill me, and even he had exaggerated. Though in defense of Lonnie, I was harder to kill than he had expected.

  My drink was gone. I got up to get another one. Pearl turned her head and looked at me with annoyance. I made a shaker of martinis and came back and sat again. Pearl sighed and rearranged herself once more.

  "Yeah," I said to her.

  "I know."


  I stared at the two images. Jocelyn must have set her video camera on a tripod and then sat in her chair and tied the scarf over her mouth. She could then have tied her ankles and knees together, looped the rope through the chair rungs, wrapped it around her waist and held it behind her with her unbound hands. It would enable her to struggle realistically, and to make muffled sounds through the scarf, and set herself free by simply letting go of the rope behind her and then untying her legs. She could have done all this with the tape running and then gone into her bound-and helpless act for five minutes or so and then erased the tape up to the point she'd started her act.

  I poured another martini and raised my glass toward Jocelyn on the screen.

  "All the world's a stage, Jocelyn," I said.

  I looked at Pearl.

  "A tale told by an idiot," I said.

  "Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

  Pearl looked at me without moving her head.

  "I know they're lines from different plays," I said to her.

  "But Jocelyn probably doesn't."

  I heard Susan's key in the door. Pearl exploded off the couch, put one hind foot in my groin, and dashed at Susan as she came in.

  Susan said something to her that sounded like "fudding wuddying pudding," but maybe wasn't, and came on into the living room and gave me a kiss.

  "Martinis," she said, and looked at my eyes.

  "And more than one."

  I nodded toward the television and the poster. Susan turned and stared at them. It didn't take her long.

  "For God's sake," Susan said after less than a minute.

  "She's faked her kidnapping."

  "And all the people merely players that fret and strut their moment upon the stage."

  "You've mixed two plays," Susan said.

  I looked at Pearl.

  "See," I said.

  "She's smarter than Jocelyn."

  CHAPTER 45

  The first thing I saw when I woke up was Susan's pink and lavender flannel night gown in a heap on the floor. This was an excellent sign. I peeked under the covers. Susan was naked except for a pair of thick white athletic socks. This was another good sign.

  Susan normally slept in thick flannel from late August until mid July. She wore the socks all year. On her night table was a half empty martini glass. I thought back over the night. My memory of the night, though furtive, confirmed the evidence of the morning.

  Susan, apparently on the basis of if-you-can't-lick-'em-join-em, had jumped into the martinis with me and we had talked of everything but Port City, and eaten spaghetti late, and gone to bed and the flannel night gown had ended up on the floor. I looked at Susan; she had the covers up over her nose and her eyes open, looking at me.

  "What are you going to do?" she said.

  "After I get us some orange juice, I'm going to fondle your naked body until you are racked with desire," I said.

  "I know that," Susan said.

  "I mean what are you going to do later, about Jocelyn."

  "I don't know. Should I find her?"

  Pearl pushed her nose through the nearly closed door and wiggled the door open and came into the bedroom. She jumped up on the bed and looked at the covers until I held them up, then she snaked down under them, in between us, and went to sleep. Susan patted her.

  "How will you do that?" Susan said.

  "She probably went to a motel," I said.

  "If you're going to kidnap yourself, it may make the papers; you can't stay with a friend."

  "But wouldn't she use a false name?" Susan said.

  "She'd need a credit card, and she probably doesn't have any false ones," I said.

  "So you'll just check area motels?"

  "Yeah."

  "And unless she had a bunch of cash, you'll find her."

  "And if she had a bunch of cash, someone will remember her for that," I said.

  "It's harder to hide than one might think," Susan said.

  "Especially for amateurs. But should I find her? She has almost certainly staged this to get my attention."

  "Yes," Susan said.

  "But we don't want her to keep escalating what she does until she gets your attention."

  "Good point," I said.

  We drank some orange juice and fooled around a little and then Susan looked at the clock, and rolled out of bed.

  "My God," she said.

  "My first appointment comes in an hour."

  She began to speed about her bedroom while I lay in bed and watched her.

  "Why not start a little earlier?" I said.

  "So you don't have to dash around?"

  "Because I was being grabbed by a hyper-gonadic thug," Susan said as she stared into her closet. She was the only person I knew who could ponder hurriedly.

  "Happen to you often?"

  "Fortunately, yes."

  Susan took out a jacket, studied it frenetically, and threw it on a chair. She took out another jacket, held it against herself and looked in the mirror.

  "Maybe that would look better," I said, "if you were wearing something on the bottom."

  "The guys at the health club tell me just the opposite," Susan said.

  "They may have a point," I said.

  But she didn't hear me; she had zoomed into the bathroom and closed the door. I finished my orange juice and got up and put on my pants and let Pearl out and fed her. I heard the shower running.

  I went back to the bedroom and made the bed. The blue pinstripe suit that Susan had chosen for the day hung neatly on hangers from a hook inside the closet door. The things she had discarded were scattered around the room like autumn leaves the west wind fleeing. I heard the shower stop. I hung the clothes back up on their hangers. In the closet the clothes were carefully separated so as not to wrinkle. I never figured out her neatness rules. Whatever they were, they were suspended while she dressed. I took the martini glasses to the kitchen and put them in the dishwasher along with the plates and pans from last night's supper. Then I made some coffee.

  I was on my second cup when Susan emerged from the bathroom naked with her hair done and her makeup on. I took coffee into the bedroom while she dressed.

  "What are you going to do?" she said.

  "I guess I'll see if I can find Jocelyn."

  "Could we be wrong?" Susan said.

  "Could someone else have copied that poster when they tied her up? And she really is a captive?"

  "We could be wrong," I said.

  "But we're probably not. If I find her, we'll know."

  Susan nodded.

  "So we go with our best guess," she said.

  "Don't you?" I said.

  "In therapy? Yes, I suppose so, guided by intelligence and experience, and something else."

  "What else?" I said.

  "I hate the word," Susan said, "but, intuition?"

  "Whatever," I said.

  "You use a little science and a little art."

  "Yes."

  "Me too," I said.

  "And rather well," she said.

  "Could you snap this for me?"

  I did. When she was gone, and the air still eddied with her scent, I took a shower and dressed and turned on CNN for Pearl to watch while she was alone, and went to my office.

  First check the mail, then find Jocelyn.

  CHAPTER 46

  When I got there, Rikki Wu was sitting on the floor in the hall outside my office door. She had her knees pulled up to her chest and her face buried in her folded arms. When I stopped in front of her, she looked up and her eyes were red from crying. Some of her eye makeup had run. I put down a hand and she took it, and I helped her to her feet. I held her hand while I unlocked my door, and led her inside, and put her in the chair in front of my desk.

  Then I went around and sat in my chair on the other side of the desk and leaned back and looked at her.

  "What do you need?" I said.

  She hugged herself a little and shivered.

  "Would you like some cof
fee?" I said.

  She continued to hug herself and shiver. She nodded her head slightly. I got up and put coffee in the filter and water in the reservoir and pushed the button. Then I came back and sat down.