by Thomas Perry
“Police? Why? What did they want?”
Eve Halloran relished the suspense, loved holding back and tantalizing, but she could hardly withhold this information. It was too dramatic, too delicious. “There were two of them, a man and a woman. They came all the way from Portland, Oregon. They said—I don’t know how to break this to you—that a friend of yours has been the victim of a crime. It sounded as though he’s been murdered.”
“Who?”
“I think they said Dennis Poole.”
“Oh, my God. Dennis Poole?”
“That’s right.” Now Eve was feeling better. That last exclamation had carried the sort of emotion that she had been hoping for. What could that man Dennis Poole have been except Tanya’s lover? “I’m very, very sorry, honey. I hated to tell you this way, but there just wasn’t any other way.”
“I can’t believe it. How could he have been murdered? He was such a sweet man. He had no enemies. Was it some kind of robbery?” There were tears in her voice. Eve Halloran could hear the tension in the throat, the higher voice.
“They didn’t say, but I don’t think that was it,” said Eve Halloran. She allowed herself to give in to an ungenerous impulse. “That was what they wanted to talk with you about.” She felt a tiny bit of guilt about holding back the next part of what they’d said, but she was still too curious. “They seemed to think you might know something about what happened. They said you had left town just about the time when he was killed.”
“You mean they think I had something to do with Dennis’s death?”
There. That was said just as Eve Halloran had imagined it. She didn’t mind that she had to say the next part now. “Oh, no, dear. They said you were not a suspect. They definitely said that. I didn’t mean to imply anything of the kind. Stupid me. I should have said that right away, first thing.”
“I’m just overwhelmed. It never seems as though something like this can happen to anybody you know.”
Eve Halloran said eagerly, “Were you very close?”
“I just can’t believe it.”
That answer was unsatisfactory. In fact, it had been an evasion. “Was he your boyfriend?”
“No.”
Mrs. Halloran waited, but there was no more to the sentence. “Well, it’s very sad. I’m sorry.” Eve Halloran was growing tired of this conversation. She had built an expectation of a flood of intimate details, but she had been repeatedly disappointed.
Tanya said, “Did the police say how I was supposed to get in touch with them? Did they leave a number or anything?”
“I’ll see if I can find it.” Her voice was glum. This had been a disappointing conversation, and the fact that there was no further excuse to prolong it made her feel even more frustrated. She had taped the card to the wall right above the phone, but she stood leaning against the kitchen sink with her arms folded for thirty seconds. Let Tanya wait. She had become awfully demanding for a former tenant, calling up at night and expecting Eve to be her message board. After a time she sauntered back to the telephone. “Tanya? Still there?”
“Yes.”
“Have a pencil?”
“Yes.”
“The name is Detective Sergeant Catherine Hobbes. She’s on the homicide squad.” She added that part with a tinge of malice. She read off the various telephone numbers and the address of the police station, slowly and distinctly, to prolong the time of feeling important while Tanya silently copied down every word, probably with her hands shaking. When she had read everything on the card she said, “Got all that?”
“Yes, thanks. I’ll give her a call.”
Eve said, “Have you thought about hiring a lawyer?”
“No. I just heard about this.”
“Well, from what I hear, the time to think about lawyers isn’t after you’ve talked to the police, it’s before.” She was spiteful now.
“I’ll think about it.”
“You do that.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Halloran.”
“You’re welcome.” She was about to add a little jab about how she was going to tell the police that she had talked to her, but she realized that the line was dead.
Nancy Mills stood beside the row of telephones in Topanga Plaza, gazing at the food court. She looked down at the little spiral notebook she had bought at the stationery store to prepare for this call, and reread the phone numbers of the cop who was after her. The name disturbed her: she had never expected that it would be a woman.
12
Catherine Hobbes sat in the homicide office. She had finished a long list of telephone calls that had not made her happy. Tanya Starling was turning out to be difficult to find. There was nothing helpful in her past—no way to find her family or her history. The apartment she had occupied in Chicago seemed to be an insuperable barrier: nothing was visible on the far side of it. A man named Carl Nelson had rented the apartment in his own name nine years ago. Tanya Starling had not been mentioned in the lease. At some point during those years she had moved in, and at some point Nelson had moved out, leaving the place to her. His accountants had continued to pay the rent until April, when she had moved out.
But it was as though she had come into existence in that apartment. Running a criminal records check on her name yielded nothing at all. She’d had an Illinois driver’s license, and it had given the apartment as her address. None of the Starlings that Catherine Hobbes had found listed in Illinois had ever heard of Tanya.
Hobbes looked up and saw Joe Pitt appear in the doorway. She stood up and said, “Come on, Joe. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”
“Really?” he said.
“Really.”
“I’m flattered.”
She brushed past him and walked to the break room, then put a dollar in the machine and watched the paper cup rattle into place, and the stream of hot black liquid fill it. She handed it to him, then bought one for herself. She went across the hall to the conference room, looked inside, then held the door open. “Let’s talk.”
He went in after her. “You have something new?”
She sat on the table, sipped her coffee. “Yes. I wanted to tell you alone. It’s been mostly a positive experience having you come up here to cooperate in the investigation. You’ve been very helpful, and I’ve tried to learn what I could from your experience.”
“But?”
“But. It’s time to cut you loose.”
“It is?”
“Yes. You’ve helped me to clarify a whole part of this case in my mind, and saved me quite a bit of time. I’m now convinced that this didn’t have anything to do with Hugo Poole. At the same time, having a person acting as Hugo Poole’s representative in this investigation isn’t going to help us when we have to go into court for a conviction. So you’ve got to go.”
“I understand.”
“You don’t sound surprised.”
“I’m not. Does Mike know about this yet?”
“Mike Farber? My captain?”
“Yes.”
“I told him this morning that this was what I was going to do.”
“And he agreed?”
“He agreed that it was my case, and that I had the right to make the decision. I made it, not Mike Farber.”
“Then I guess I’ll try to stop and say good-bye to him before I leave. I wish you the best of luck on the case, and after watching you work, I have confidence that you’ll handle it.” He held out his hand and she shook it. He smiled. “See you,” he said, and he walked out the door and closed it.
Catherine remained perched on the table for a full minute, sipping her coffee and thinking. She knew that this decision had been inevitable and right, and she was relieved that it had gone so smoothly. She was also just a bit regretful, and she wasn’t sure why.
She had to admit that was not exactly true. During the investigation she had begun to forget the imposition that Joe Pitt represented, and become used to having someone she could talk to about the case—not just some other cop who had a dozen
cases of his own to think about, or a superior who had administrative details clogging his mind. When she had talked to Pitt she could talk in shorthand, and he knew exactly what she meant. She could test her ideas on him, and expect him to have ideas of his own.
Catherine tried to analyze her feelings. When Mike Farber had first called her in to tell her he had assigned her to work on a murder with Joe Pitt, she had felt insulted. If her captain thought she was so incompetent and inexperienced that she needed help from some out-of-town retiree, then she should get out of homicide. A moment later, when she had heard what a hotshot Joe Pitt was, she had wondered how it could be anything but an insult to her sex. Would Mike Farber have expected one of the men to serve as tour guide to a visiting potentate? No, it had to be the woman, the pretty face to please the visitor, and because the visitor was so great, all the hostess really needed to be was pretty. Joe Pitt would solve the case.
She had tested Joe Pitt—maybe tormented him a bit—and found that he wasn’t so bad. She had come to feel comfortable with him. Why was she putting it like that? She had liked him, felt attracted to him. Maybe that was the worst thing about him. She couldn’t afford to have him around any longer.
She jumped down, took her coffee to the break room, and poured it down the sink, then walked back to her desk in the homicide office.
Catherine’s telephone rang. Maybe this was it. Maybe this was Tanya Starling. “Homicide. Hobbes.”
“Hey, Hobbes. This is Doug Crowley in San Francisco. Has Tanya Starling called in yet?”
“Not yet.” Hobbes had been near her desk almost the whole shift. “Mrs. Halloran said that Tanya promised she would call, but she doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to do it.”
“Well, I have something else that might be useful. The DMV has a hit on the roommate, Rachel Sturbridge.”
“What is it?” asked Hobbes. She sat at the edge of her chair and pulled her yellow pad toward her.
“It’s her car. She’s sold her car.”
“Her too? They both sold their cars? When and where did she sell it?”
“Los Angeles, about two weeks ago. The new owner just got around to registering it with the DMV. It was already registered in California, so she didn’t think there was any hurry—she wouldn’t get pulled over or anything. Her name is Wanda Achison, and she lives in a suburb called Westlake Village.”
“Has anyone talked with her yet?”
“As soon as we got this information I gave her a call. She sounded a little upset, because she was afraid it was stolen and we were going to take it away from her. She calmed down after a minute, though.”
“Did she buy it from Rachel personally? No intermediaries or dealers involved?”
“Yes. Rachel advertised it in a local swap sheet, Miss Achison called the number, and Rachel drove it to her house to let her check it out. Miss Achison said Rachel was in her late twenties, long dark hair, five-five, one fifteen to one twenty. Rachel told her she was selling the car to pay off a credit card debt.”
“That wouldn’t be too unusual among people trying to start a business. Did she still have her address and phone?”
“No, but the paper did. It was a motel, and they don’t have a record of Rachel Sturbridge staying there. I figured Tanya might have been the one who had signed the register, but they didn’t have her down either. There must be a third person.”
“Maybe,” said Catherine. “Can you give me Wanda Achison’s address and phone number, please?”
He read the information, and she copied it. “Thanks, Detective Crowley.”
“No problem.” He sighed. “Are you and Joe going down there to do an interview?”
“Joe isn’t involved in the investigation anymore.”
“He isn’t? May I ask why?”
“Yes. He’s been very cooperative, provided some information that eliminated some dead ends for us. Obviously he doesn’t need a testimonial from me. But I don’t think a civilian belongs in a homicide investigation.”
“I’ve always liked Joe, and I was glad to see him,” he said. “But I don’t either.”
“Thanks for all of your help,” she said.
“Don’t mention it. And let me know if you need anything else from us in San Francisco.”
“I will.”
She hung up the telephone, then picked up the photograph of Tanya Starling that had been made from the surveillance tape. There she was, caught from the side, entering Dennis Poole’s hotel room. Catherine Hobbes stared at the face. Tanya was just a small-boned woman who appeared to be in her late twenties, her expression untroubled. The blond hair that had obscured the features for most of the tape happened to have swung to the other side of the face for this instant, so all of the features were visible. The outlines were just vague enough to frustrate the viewer’s eye as it tried to focus perfectly on an image that could never be any clearer. The bright, shiny hair drew the mind’s attention more than the face did.
Catherine opened the file and scanned the lists of other agencies that had been cooperating in this case. She found the telephone number she wanted, then called the Illinois Department of Motor Vehicles to make her formal request for the driver’s license photograph of Tanya Starling. She had waited long enough for Tanya to turn up or respond to her inquiries. It was time to go after her.
Catherine thought for a moment. Crowley had said that Rachel Sturbridge’s car had been registered in California, so that meant the driver almost certainly was too. She dialed the number of the California DMV and requested the license photograph of Rachel Sturbridge.
13
Nancy Mills sat in her small apartment, staring out the window. It was eight-thirty, the time of each evening that made her want to open the door and go. She could see the sky through the west window. It was taking on that beautiful shading, the lower edge of it red, then above that a blue that began as only a little bit darker than the daylight sky, but as the eye looked higher, the sky darkened into an indigo canopy, with a few stars beginning to show.
She could almost hear her mother’s voice calling. This was the time of evening when she always had to come in from play, and she used to come home dirty, the dust sometimes held to her little bare legs by dried sweat. She hated having to come home when the air was full of promise and expectation. Big, important things were about to happen. She knew that they were good things, marvels and pleasures that the grown-ups kept all to themselves.
She would usually let the sky get too dark before she made it home, so she would have to come up the street running. She remembered the sound and feel as, breathing hard, she made her sneaker pound on the bottom step of the front porch, and she pushed through the screen door into the living room.
Her mother and the latest boyfriend would already be in the bedroom getting ready. Her mother’s skin would be pink and moist from the shower, the tight straps of her bra making depressions in the fat on her back. She would dance to tug the panty hose up over her hips. If the girl came in right at dark, her mother would be in a cheerful mood, the morning’s hangover and remorse erased by the afternoon’s nap, and her mind set on the adult evening that was coming.
The bathroom would be steamy. She remembered the boyfriend picking up the hand towel from the sink to wipe off the mirror so he could see to slide the razor along his bristly jowl, leaving a swath in the white shaving cream, pink and irritated but hairless, his mouth pursed and squeezed to one side to present a smooth, tight stretch of skin to the safety razor. She thought of it as a joke name for something that left small bright cuts on his chin so he had to stick bits of white toilet paper there, and let the red blood hold it in place.
It was a summer memory tonight because of the summer sky outside. The man in the memory changed, because there were so many of them. They were both a series and a progression, the nicer, younger ones all part of earlier memories, and the older ones coming later, when her mother’s body began to thicken and her skin to loosen and wrinkle. Each man was the same in every way
that mattered—the drinking and the yelling—but they differed in small ways, like how much hair they had or what color it was, or their names.
The boyfriend would get ready, and be standing around getting irritable before her mother would really begin. She would go to the other bedroom she had converted to her closet in her panty hose and bra, and then begin to try on each of her dresses in front of a big mirror with a frame that was supposed to hang on a wall, but was propped against a chair at an angle.
Each night the dressing would proceed all the way to its end several times. She would choose a dress, put it on, then go into the bathroom to apply her makeup and brush her hair, and suddenly discover some invisible flaw in the way the outfit made her look or feel, and take it off again. The earrings, necklace, and shoes were specific to the outfit, so they had to go too. Then she would put on another dress and the same thing would happen. Eventually, she would announce she was ready and would emerge, suddenly impatient to go, as though someone else had delayed her.
The little girl would look at her mother in amazement. Already it was clear that they were not going to look alike. Her mother was short, with big blue eyes and skin like cream. The girl was tall and bony, with pale skin and stringy hair. Her mother would look at her on her way out the door as a kind of afterthought.
“Lock the door after us,” she would say. “Don’t open it for anybody.”
Her mother and the boyfriend would go out and stand on the porch until the mother heard the click, and then they would get into the car. Usually they would be gone until just before dawn. The girl would sit alone in the house, feeling the loss as the sky darkened and deepened.
Often she heard voices outside her house in the calm night air as people passed by. Sometimes they sounded as though they were young, even her age. She was forced to stay in, lying on her bed in the dark, listening, while they were out there doing things and knowing things that she could not.