In Sunlight or In Shadow

by Lawrence Block

  He takes the stairs to the fifth floor two at a time, out of breath, and is about to knock on her door—he wants to pound on it, scream her name, smack her, finally do all the things that he has wanted, planned to do to her—then notices the door is slightly ajar, and he hears voices from inside.

  He pushes the door open, takes a few tentative steps in, murderous thoughts careening through his brain—he will kill her and whomever she is with.

  The foyer is empty. Voices coming from the living room, canned, electric.

  The television set.

  A news show. Blue light cast into the living room, which slowly comes into focus. Throw pillows on the floor. An upended chair. Rug bunched up as if there has been a struggle. His normally quiescent heart beats faster.

  Spots on the tan linoleum floor, a trail that he follows into the bedroom where they become streaks. A pool of blood on the crumpled white sheets beside her bed. More blood on the naked mattress. He spies half of her pink bra beside the bloodstained sheets, the other half across the room, along with her familiar pink slip, which is torn and clotted with blood.

  He swallows hard, the taste of cigar gone acrid and foul in his dry mouth, his body pulsing to the sound of sirens that he did not hear a moment ago, but they are close.

  Blood is pumping into his neck, his face, he can feel it bloom in his cheeks, hot. He spins in one direction than the other, spies the curtains in her bedroom window billowing and makes a dash for the fire escape. But why? He’s done nothing.

  He’s halfway out the window when the police burst into the room, guns drawn, shouting for him to stop.

  Why are they here? How did they know?

  The interrogation room is airless but frigid. How long has he been here? He has lost track of time. They have given him three or four cups of black coffee and his bladder is aching but when he asks to use the bathroom they act as if they haven’t heard him.

  One detective after another asking the same questions, making the same inane statements.

  Did you know the girl?

  Where is she now?

  What have you done with her?

  It’s hours before he gets his one phone call.

  His lawyer, Rich Lowenthal, whom he has known since college, never a friend, he has none really, but someone he trusts, stares at him, sighs, laces his hands across pinstripes straining at his belly.

  “What have you told them?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Good.” Lowenthal leans in closer, whispers, “But you can tell me. The girl, who is she? What was she—to you?”

  “She was—” He thinks a minute. “Nothing. I hardly knew her. We’d gone out a couple of times, that’s all.”

  Lowenthal sits back. “You don’t have to tell me, I’ll defend you no matter what, but—”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  And there isn’t, is there? He didn’t do anything, except watch her. He’s committed no crime. Unless stripping young women of everything, reducing them to nothing but sniveling needy wretches is a crime, and he doesn’t think so. They all agreed, at first, before they were broken, too broken to fight back. More than one of them professed love, didn’t they?

  He tries to picture the girls and two or three come to mind, an image of the last one, Laura or Lauren, the one before this girl, flashes through his mind—sobbing, begging him to stop, to love her—then fades.

  “You two have a fight that got out of control?” Lowenthal asks. “You can tell me.”

  “You sound like the cops.”

  Lowenthal sighs. “They say they’ve got stuff.”

  “Stuff?” For a moment he thinks his lawyer is a moron, like the rest of them, like everyone.

  “Your fingerprints, for one, are all over the apartment.”

  “Well, sure, I’ve been there before, once—” No, more than once. Many times with the last one, but with this one, only once. “Once,” he says again.

  “Okay. Fine. But they found a used condom in the trash. It’s with their tech team. Tell me it is not going to have your semen in it.”

  He swallows hard. “So what if we had sex. It’s not like I killed her!”

  “Easy there, buddy. No one says you did. And there’s no body, not yet, so that’s in your favor.”

  He feels his face flush, a rash inching up his neck. “This is insane. I didn’t do anything!”

  Lowenthal sucks his lip. “They say there are pictures of you on her cell phone.”

  “Are there? So what?”

  “And she’s written things.”

  “What—things?”

  “They wouldn’t tell me, not exactly, but enough. The rest they’re saving for the DA. Apparently she made notes in her phone that say she was afraid for her life, afraid of you, that she found out you’d been watching her from your window and—”

  “But I—”

  “Your windows face hers, right?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “She’s written that you watched her, stalked her, fooled her for a while before you handcuffed her, started threatening to kill her.”

  “I never—It wasn’t like that.”

  Though it was, wasn’t it? With the others. But not with her. He never got past watching her.

  Lowenthal sighs, says, “If I’d known, I would have stopped them from searching your apartment. They’ve found handcuffs. And a knife. And they say there’s blood on the knife. Also with the lab.”

  He stares at his lawyer until the man’s features blur and he sees her, the pink lady, sucking on her cut finger. I snagged it on my zipper.

  “She’s from Salina,” he says. “Kansas.”

  “And?”

  “You have to find her.”

  “In Kansas?”

  “I don’t know? Maybe. I—I think she set me up.”

  “Why?”

  He has no idea. He’s not even sure it’s true. “Somebody else had to have been there, in her apartment. She was waving to someone from her window. I saw her.”

  “When was this?”

  “Just before, before I came over and found . . .”

  “So you were watching her?”

  One of the detectives comes back into the room holding a plastic evidence bag. Inside it, his Swiss Army knife.

  She pictures the pink bra and slip, not sure why she chose them except they seemed sweet and innocent and good for the part. She remembers tearing the bra in half, rending the slip, dripping them with blood. She will never tell her sister about that, about any of it. She’s not sure Lauren could take it, or would even have wanted her to do it. Dear sweet Lauren, who is broken, medicated. Her little sister, whom she adores, and would do anything to protect. Too late for protecting her, but revenge, there’s always time for revenge.

  She feels Lauren’s sharp shoulder blades when she hugs her, pulls back to see her sister’s pretty eyes, glazed.

  “How many pills have you taken today, honey?”

  “Pills?” Lauren shakes her head in slow motion. It has been two months since she got out of the hospital, and she seems no better, though the scars on her arms are fading, along with the ones on her belly and legs, the cuts he made, though the ones inside, the psychological ones, will take longer to heal.

  “I don’t remember,” Lauren says.

  “You can’t take that many pills, honey. It’s dangerous.”

  Lauren’s glazed eyes land on her sister’s bandaged wrist. “What . . . happened?”

  “Oh, this? No big thing. A scratch, is all.” She touches the bandage, feels the wound throb beneath her fingertips, remembers how she slid the razor across her wrist, couldn’t believe how much blood there was, though she’d hoped there would be, close to fainting by the time she’d stopped dabbing it on the sheets and mattress, and how much gauze she’d needed to wrap it. Nothing like the tiny prick she’d made on her thumb with his knife, and the way she’d smeared her blood along the blade before closing it and putting it back in his pocket.

  “Where
did you . . . go?” Lauren asks.

  “I had some business to take care of, but I’m back now. And Maria took good care of you, didn’t she?” She smiles at the Mexican girl she’s hired to take care of her sister while she was gone, the same girl who helped her buy a house, who will go with them when they leave.

  “I have packed all of Miss Lauren’s things,” Maria says.

  “Where . . . are we going?” Lauren asks, her words slurred by drugs.

  “Somewhere safe,” she says.

  For a moment Lauren’s eyes focus and blaze, her hands splay out in front of her as if fighting an invisible attacker. “No! No! Stop!”

  She takes hold of Lauren’s hands gently. “It’s okay, honey. You’re safe. Everything’s been taken care of.”

  Lauren quiets, leans into her big sister, who has always looked out for her.

  The big sister who knows they will soon be coming to talk to Lauren, who had lived in that apartment, whose name is on a lease somewhere.

  But her name, her name is nowhere.

  So let them come. They will be gone by then, in the house in Puerto Morelos, bought under neither one’s name, waiting for them. It is a small sacrifice to make for her sister, and she has always liked Mexico.

  “Everything will be okay,” she says, stroking Lauren’s hair.

  She’s knows it’s hard to convict without a body, without a real girl they can find and identify. But she also knows that juries have convicted on less, and either way he will be under investigation for a very long time, that he will be watched.

  JUSTIN SCOTT is the author of thirty-four thrillers, mysteries and sea stories including The Man Who Loved The Normandie, Rampage, and The Shipkiller, which the International Thriller Writers lists in Thrillers: 100 Must-Reads.

  He writes the Ben Abbott detective series set in small-town Connecticut (HardScape, StoneDust, FrostLine, McMansion, and Mausoleum), and collaborates with Clive Cussler on the Isaac Bell detective adventure series.

  The Mystery Writers of America nominated him for Edgar Allan Poe awards for Best First Novel and Best Short Story. He is a member of the Authors League, The Players, and the Adams Round Table.

  Paul Garrison is his main pen name, under which he writes modern sea stories (Fire and Ice, Red Sky at Morning, Buried at Sea, Sea Hunter, and The Ripple Effect) and thrillers based on a Robert Ludlum character (The Janson Command, The Janson Option).

  Born in Manhattan, Scott grew up on Long Island’s Great South Bay in a family of professional writers. His father, A. Leslie Scott, wrote Westerns and poetry. His mother, Lily K. Scott, wrote novels and short stories for slicks and pulps. His sister, Alison Scott Skelton, is a novelist, as was her late husband, C. L. Skelton. Scott holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history, and before becoming a writer, drove boats and trucks, built Fire Island beach houses, edited an electronic engineering journal, and tended bar in a Hell’s Kitchen saloon.

  Scott lives in Connecticut with his wife, filmmaker Amber Edwards.

  A Woman in the Sun, 1961

  Oil on linen, 40 ×60 in. (101.9 × 152.9 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art,

  New York; 50th Anniversary Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Albert Hackett in honor of Edith and

  Lloyd Goodrich 84.31 © Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper, licensed by Whitney Museum

  of American Art. Digital Image © Whitney Museum, NY

  A WOMAN IN THE SUN

  BY JUSTIN SCOTT

  Could she change his mind? Four steps to the open window, lean out and call, “Don’t.”

  Or walk to the window and call, “Go ahead, do it. Good luck.”

  Or stand here and do nothing.

  He had left her his last cigarette. She had talked him into leaving the gun and he had kept his word. It was still on the night table, wrapped in one of her stockings. She had the time of the cigarette to make up her mind. More time, if she didn’t smoke it. Let it smoulder.

  She glanced at herself in the cheval mirror.

  A naked woman smoked a cigarette in the morning sun. She stood beside a single bed. Her high-heels were under it. She was too tall for the bed. Her feet had pushed the blanket loose, stuck out and got cold. He was taller and had spent some of the night sitting up in the armchair.

  “You stand like a dancer,” he told her.

  “No, I don’t. I’m a tennis player. Where do you think I got these legs?”

  Strong as a man’s, muscled like a man’s.

  That got a grin out of him, and the cloud drifted from his face for a moment.

  “Amateur or pro?”

  She could have said, Where do you think I got these breasts, up-turned like a girl’s. Years of sharpening her game had saved them from gravity, cinched for day and night practice since she budded at twelve. Or she could have said, “Pro,” and left it at that. But it turned into a night for talking.

  “When you lose every match in the season, you’re not a pro.”

  “Did you win before your losing streak?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “So what’s different? You’re too young to be getting old. What’s happened?”

  Good question.

  She played so little this season she lost her tan and her hair was darker, a natural color she hadn’t seen in years. “I miss the sun. I miss being outdoors . . . I played yesterday, first time in a month.” A test. Amazing after so long off, her timing was still dead-on, footwork like lightning, and she hit harder than ever. The skills were there. But still not the heart to win. “My coach died,” she said. “My father.”

  She leaned forward and caught the mirror at an angle that reflected the night table, the gun on it, and her other stocking tossed over the lampshade. One last night to remember, he had asked in the bar, like a soldier shipping out to war.

  “And next time I walk in here, you’ll be bragging to the bartender.”

  “Dead men don’t talk.”

  “Yeah, until you change your mind.”

  “I am not changing my mind.”

  She believed him and got the idea in her head to change it for him.

  She couldn’t blame the booze. She had sipped from an endless Seven and Seven, a glass that seemed to last all night. They talked. He nursed a beer in the silences. The bartender poured him a second at one point. He barely touched it.

  “What if your last night is so memorable you want to do it again?”

  “We’ll have all night. I’m not dying in the dark.”

  “I mean again the next night.”

  “I’m just looking for a good-bye to remember.”

  “Or painting an elaborate scheme to get me into bed. Walk out the next morning, don’t follow through, and leave me wondering why did I fall for it.”

  “I will leave you knowing you did me a great kindness that I will remember for eternity.”

  For some reason that made her laugh. He laughed too, and the cloud lifted and they stepped out into the warm night and kissed in the parking lot.

  “I told you I’d get a smile out of you.”

  “I said that, not you.”

  “You said it, I thought it.”

  “Last chance to laugh.”

  “Laughs don’t count. They’re less than a smile. You can’t help a laugh. You have to want to smile.”

  She asked, “Isn’t suicide a sin?”

  “Only for Catholics.”

  “I can’t remember what it is for Protestants.”

  “Character flaw.”

  She liked that enough to leave her car and climb on his motorcycle.

  He had been vague about whose house this was. It hadn’t mattered. They had the place to themselves.

  She heard the screen door bang. He wasn’t on her cigarette clock.

  “Tell me again why you want to kill yourself.”

  “I already told you, it’s nobody’s business.”

  “When did you get the idea?” She had no clue how the question had formed in her head but a change in his expression told her she had ask
ed the right one. He thought for a while.

  “Right when I sold my car and bought the bike.”

  “Before or during?”

  Again he thought. “During. I asked why am I doing this and the answer came up, because I’m ready to die.”

  “Did you ask yourself why?”

  “Sure,” he said quickly, then shook his head. “No. That’s not true. I didn’t ask. I just knew it.”

  “Knew what?” she asked, sharper than she intended.

  “Knew it was right—listen, there’s no big story here.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’re making this up. When did you first get in the idea? First time.”

  “I was in country.”

  “In country? What do you mean? What country?”

  “It’s an expression. It means out in the boondocks. Up river. In the jungle. Do you know where Viet Nam is?”

  “It used to be French Indochina. I went out with a French player who grew up there. His father was a diplomat.”

  “Okay, that’s where I was in country when I got the idea.”

  “Did you ask why?”

  “Didn’t have to. It was such a relief . . . Do you remember, I told you I was a helicopter mechanic?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They dropped me in country to fix a machine that went down in the jungle. In a grove of bamboo. I kept thinking, bamboo is what they torture people with.”

  “Who?”

  “I knew a guy they captured.”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “Viet Minh. The rebels. Viet Cong. Scared the hell out of me. I’m thinking if they find me before I can fix this thing and fly it out of here, they’ll torture me.”

  “Were you all alone?”

  “All by my lonesome. We were thin on the ground. They couldn’t spare more than one.”

  “Which they?”

  “United States Marines.”

  “You were expected to fix the helicopter and fly it out of there with no protection?”

  “Navy Colt. That one.” He nodded at the gun on the night table. “I was scared, paralyzed. Jumping at every sound—of which there are many in the jungle. Then suddenly it hit me.”

  “What?”