Blind Pursuit

by Michael Prescott

  “What did you do?”

  “Called the supervising officer of the MAC team—that’s M-A-C, Mobile Acute Crisis. They respond to reports of disturbed or disoriented individuals. Mostly transients, but sometimes you get a person who’s suffered a seizure or a stroke. Anyway, they haven’t encountered your sister. Then I tried the city and county jails—”

  “The jails?” That idea never would have occurred to her.

  “Anything can happen. But Erin isn’t incarcerated. And you’ll be relieved to hear that the coroner’s office knows nothing about her either.”

  “Thank God.” The morgue was another possibility she hadn’t considered, or perhaps hadn’t wanted to consider.

  “You said she doesn’t suffer from chronic epileptic fits? That it’s been years since the last one?”

  “That’s right.”

  “She hasn’t reported being harassed or stalked?”

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  “And you saw no indication of depression?”

  “She was fine, like I told you. What are you saying, anyway? You think she committed suicide?”

  “I haven’t suggested anything of the kind.”

  “She isn’t suicidal. Erin’s tough. A fighter. She always keeps it together, never lets things overwhelm her, get the better of her. Unlike me.”

  “What’s so objectionable about you?”

  “I’m not exactly a cool head in a crisis ... as I guess you’ve noticed.”

  “I’d say you’ve handled yourself exceptionally well. You’ve done everything I would have done in your place.”

  The compliment buoyed her, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to accept it. “You wouldn’t have been fighting back tears the whole time.”

  He didn’t answer that. “You said you looked in Erin’s apartment. I take it you’ve got a key.”

  “Sure.”

  “Her place is a rental unit? Manager on duty?”

  “Till five-thirty.”

  “Why don’t we meet there? I’d like to check it out for myself. I don’t have a warrant, but if your sister gave you free access, and the manager approves—”

  “She will. She’s as worried as I am. Well, almost.”

  “Can you get to Erin’s place in half an hour?”

  “Yes. The address—”

  “I already know it. I punched up her M.V.D. file. I’ll meet you there at four-fifteen.”

  Click, and a dial tone buzzed in her ear.

  Half an hour would be just enough time to get there. She had to hurry.

  Mrs. Garcia had already left when Annie entered the front room. Just as well; Annie had no time for one of the woman’s interminable monologues on the health and well-being of her dachshund, Snoops.

  Despite her haste and worry, she took a moment’s pleasure in the familiar clutter of her shop. It was a small place, what most people would refer to as a hole in the wall—but it was her hole in the wall, brought into existence out of her imagination, investment, and work, and she loved it more dearly than anything in her life, except Erin.

  Hanging plants in wicker baskets dangled from ceiling hooks, trailing long leafy stems. Barrels of silk flowers and other artificial greenery flanked the counter, setting off displays of dried flowers in bunches and wreathes. In a walk-in cooler along one wall, bouquets and nosegays sprouted from glass and ceramic vases. Scattered around the room, half hidden in a jungle of green, were odd treasures—teddy bears, chocolates, dried fruits, greeting cards.

  But what she cherished above all were not silk flowers, not dried flowers, not flowers tucked away in a humidified and refrigerated cabinet, but living blossoms in the open air, fragrant and alluring, inviting every customer to smell and touch. The shop was crowded almost to bursting with blue dwarf asters, sweet violets, orchids, bell-like lilies of the valley, carnations in rainbow assortments, painted daisies, towering stalks of hollyhock. The perfumes of countless blooms mingled in an aromatic medley.

  Breathing in those scents, Annie remembered an evening, five years ago, when she had stood outside the storefront in the late summer twilight, gazing up at a gaudy canopy, newly installed. SUNRISE FLOWERS, it said, a reference to the store’s location in a suburban shopping plaza on Sunrise Road and, less prosaically, to the wordless sense of hope that always seemed to rise in her with the sun.

  Hope had been all she’d had at the beginning, and not very much of it either. From the start she had feared that the enterprise was doomed. Surely she was too much of a scatterbrain to run her own business.

  She’d had a plan, though, a way to set her shop apart from the competition. Though she’d offered all the conventional merchandise and services provided by any florist, she had gone a step further by specializing in a variety of exotic plants, hard to find in this part of town.

  From the beginning her ads in the newspapers and the Yellow Pages had featured bonsai trees, large-bloom South American roses, and a wide selection of especially beautiful blooms imported from Holland, Japan, and the tropics. None of these items came cheap, and she had worried that she wouldn’t attract a sizable clientele willing to pay a premium for quality.

  Her worries had proven to be entirely unfounded. Sunrise Flowers had struggled for only a few short months—months that hadn’t seemed so short at the time—before word of mouth brought a stream of customers to her door. Though Annie would never be rich, she seemed unlikely to starve. She had made it. She was her own boss, and prospering.

  Success had proved infinitely more shocking than failure would have been. Perhaps, she sometimes thought, a guardian angel—one with a firm grasp of accounting principles—was watching over her.

  She hoped an angel, or somebody, was watching over Erin right now.

  Her assistant, cutting roses and soaking them at a worktable behind the counter, looked up as she came in. “Any news?”

  “I’ve got to go back to her apartment. A police detective is meeting me there.”

  “A detective ...”

  “Yeah, well, I thought it was time to get the professionals involved. Look, I’m sorry you had to handle Mrs. Garcia on your own.”

  “She’s not so bad. Don’t worry about it.”

  “It’s already three forty-five. I’ll be involved with this for the rest of the day. Why don’t we close up now, and you can deliver the centerpiece to Antonio’s?”

  “Antonio’s doesn’t need it till seven. I’ll close the shop at six-thirty, as usual, and drop it off on my way home.”

  She was touched. “You don’t have to do all that. I mean, it’s beyond the call of duty and everything.”

  “Just leave me the keys and get going. You’ve got more important things to do than talk to me.”

  “Well ... okay.” She dropped the key ring on the counter. “Look, if any other local deliveries come up, use the messenger service. It’s better than leaving the place unattended.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “And if Euro-Flora calls again, tell them I double-checked the invoice, and I did order tulips.”

  “Right.”

  She hesitated. “You’re sure it’s no problem, running the store by yourself?”

  “It’s a flower shop, Annie. Not a nuclear reactor. Now go.”

  “I appreciate this. Really.”

  As she was turning to leave, he said softly, “She’ll be okay. You’ll see.”

  Caring words. She smiled at him.

  “Thank you, Harold. Really. Thank you so much.”

  He nodded, but he did not smile in answer.

  That was the funny thing about her assistant.

  Harold Gund never smiled.

  18

  Michael Walker hated cases like this.

  He glanced at Annie Reilly, standing stiffly at his side in the elevator of the Pantano Fountains, watching the numbers change. He had a good idea of what he would be required to tell her before long.

  In his thirteen years with the Tucson P.D., first as a young uniformed cop f
resh from college, then as a detective working robbery-homicide, Walker had fielded countless missing-person reports. He knew every step of the dance he and Annie were in the midst of performing ... and how that dance would end.

  He only hoped she would understand. The barely controlled anxiety that had frozen her in a pose of unnatural rigidity was not cause for optimism.

  Unobtrusively he studied Annie’s reflection on the polished inner doors of the elevator. She was slender and petite, her skin glowing with a light suntan. A pale green dress accented her eyes and made a pleasing contrast with her loose red hair.

  Standing beside her in the reflected image was a man in a brown, slightly rumpled suit jacket and a crooked gray tie, a man with close-cropped sandy hair the color of desert soil.

  People told Michael Walker he looked like a native Arizonan, a true desert rat. He was long-boned and lean, and he moved with unhurried ease. His face was carved into the flat planes and sharp angles of a movie cowboy’s classic features, the skin stretched drum-head-tight over the bones. His unconscious tendency to squint produced a cluster of faint creases at the corners of his eyes.

  Though he shaved every morning, by midday a shadow of beard stubble invariably would emerge, becoming obvious by late afternoon. Once aware of this, he had bought a cordless shaver, which he stowed in his desk or car, but on busy days like today, he found no opportunity to use it.

  A cowhand, folks thought when they took note of his lanky form and narrowed eyes. One of the originals. Last of a dying breed.

  Untrue. He was no great outdoorsman. Didn’t even like the desert’s summer heat and dryness, tolerated those conditions purely for the sake of the comfortable winters. Born and raised in Chicago, he had suffered through his share of ice storms and blizzards. His intention was never to shovel snow again.

  So after four years at Chicago State, he’d moved west, ending up in Tucson. But a cowboy? Horses made him sneeze.

  The elevator doors separated. “Her apartment is this way,” Annie said eagerly, leading him down the hall.

  “Nice building.” Walker observed fresh paint on the baseboards, new carpet, polished fixtures. A luxury residential complex in a desirable east-side location. A top-floor unit here wouldn’t come cheap. “Your sister seems to be doing quite well.”

  “Psychology pays. There are a lot of screwed-up people out there. Yours truly being a prime example.”

  “Do you always put yourself down like that?”

  Annie stopped before a closed door and fished a set of keys out of her purse. “I don’t mean to. It’s just that I’ve always felt that Erin and I are sort of a yin and yang. She’s everything I’m not, and vice versa. And she’s got her head on so straight, mine feels crooked by comparison.”

  Walker smiled. “Well, it looks okay to me.”

  Before exploring the apartment, he took a closer look at the front door. There was only one lock, a dead bolt. He saw no scratches on the jamb or faceplate, no indications of tampering.

  Following Annie inside, he surveyed a spacious living room, tastefully furnished and exceptionally clean.

  “Did your sister leave the lights on?”

  “No. That was me. I must’ve forgotten to turn them off. Maybe I shouldn’t have even come here, huh? I might have contaminated the crime scene.”

  Walker smiled at that. “We don’t know if it is a crime scene,” he said gently, “or even if there’s been a crime.”

  He circled the room. The furniture and decorations appeared undisturbed. The entertainment center, stocked with expensive electronics, was untouched.

  A sliding door framed a balcony. Locked. The glass intact.

  Annie watched him expectantly, as if imagining that any moment he would release a shout of triumph and deduce her sister’s whereabouts.

  No, he was not looking forward to the conversation they would be having in a few minutes. Not at all.

  On the mantel was a framed photo portrait—two women, both redheaded, arms around each other’s shoulders, laughing at the camera. One was Annie; the other, whom he recognized from her M.V.D. photo, was Erin.

  Both were attractive but in different ways. There was an austerity, a cool and level seriousness, to Erin Reilly, despite her smiling face. Annie, by contrast, appeared mischievous, playful, something of a rascal.

  Walker had seen her smile only in this photo. A pleasant smile. He remembered her saying that Erin was beautiful and she herself was not. He disagreed.

  “That’s us,” Annie said, stepping to his side.

  “Was it taken recently?”

  “Last November. Around Thanksgiving. I remember we posed for it at lunchtime. The photographer kept coming on to us, and we pretended to be interested. We were in ... kind of a silly mood....”

  Her voice trailed off as she came back to the present—the empty apartment, the missed appointments, Erin gone.

  In the den Walker found a potted schefflera, shelves of psychology books and periodicals, a computer and laser printer. There were no printouts in the tray.

  “Does she use the computer exclusively for business?” he asked Annie, who stood attentively in the doorway. It occurred to him that he sounded like an IRS agent.

  “Mostly. She keeps a journal on it, though.”

  “A personal journal?”

  “I think so. I’m not really sure, actually.”

  “Well, you might want to consider booting it up. Not now—when you’re alone. There could be some clue to her state of mind.”

  “State of mind? You mean you think she ran off on her own? Voluntarily?”

  “People do.”

  “Not Erin.”

  It was too soon to be talking about this. Walker didn’t press the point.

  The bathroom was clean and scrubbed. “Her towels are dry,” Annie said from her vantage point in the hall. “The shower too.”

  Walker had observed both details. He was more interested in the medicine cabinet. Two of the glass shelves were nearly empty. From what was left, he could make a good guess as to which items had been taken—toothbrush, toothpaste, comb, hairbrush, deodorant.

  Not things a burglar would want. But Erin Reilly would take them if she were going on a trip.

  On the top shelf, among the aspirin and the cold remedies, was a bottle of pills labeled TEGRETOL. He showed it to Annie. “Erin’s epilepsy medicine?”

  “Yes. That’s what she takes.”

  “I’m surprised she doesn’t carry it with her.”

  “I thought she did. In her purse. Maybe this is an extra bottle.”

  He checked the label again, then replaced the pills on the shelf. “Yes, it’s a recent refill of her prescription. She probably hasn’t run out of the previous batch yet.”

  Bedroom next. The bed was unmade, sheets sagging in broken ridges like a cake’s melted icing. Nothing damaged, no sign of a struggle.

  The jewelry box on the dresser was still crammed with necklaces and earrings. Two hundred dollars in emergency cash remained in the most obvious, even proverbial, of hiding places—the sock drawer. Her wristwatch lay on the nightstand.

  “I hadn’t noticed that,” Annie said when Walker pointed it out.

  “Does she have another watch?”

  Annie stared at the small gold-plated Armitron. “Not that I know of. And she always wears a watch whenever she goes anywhere. She’s ... she’s very punctual.”

  Walker digested this information without comment.

  The windows were shut. Heat pressed against the panes. The locks had not been forced.

  Last, he checked the closet. Empty hangers, many of them. Nothing in the laundry basket.

  Slowly he nodded.

  Annie observed the brief incline of his head and was instantly alongside him. “Find something?”

  He saw it in her face, in the wide green eyes and pursed lips—the desperate hopefulness, the intense need for answers.

  This was when she expected him to make his brilliant deduction, prove his c
riminalistic skills. Do you see this speck of dust, Annie? It’s found only in the forests of southern Romania—thus proving that your sister was kidnapped by Gypsies.

  Something like that.

  He didn’t answer at once. He took a moment to peer into the back of the closet, where two items of luggage were stored. A carry-on bag and a large suitcase. There was a space between them where another suitcase, apparently of intermediate size, had stood.

  “How familiar are you with Erin’s wardrobe?” he asked.

  “We trade clothes all the time.”

  “Can you take a look at what’s here and get some idea of which items, if any, are missing?”

  Annie registered disappointment. This was hardly the stunning breakthrough she’d anticipated. “Sure. I can do that.”

  He waited while she took inventory.

  “As best I can tell,” she said finally, “three outfits are missing.” Puzzlement had replaced worry in her expression for the first time.

  “Items suitable for spring?”

  “Two skirts and, I think, a pair of shorts. Three blouses, all short-sleeve. Oh, and a pair of boots. I don’t see her robe either.”

  “Pajamas? Slippers?”

  “She’s got several pair of each. I can’t be sure.”

  “Some things were taken from the bathroom also. Toothbrush, comb—toiletries. And there’s a suitcase missing from her luggage set.”

  Annie sat on the bed, her features suddenly slack. “You’re saying she packed a bag and left.”

  “Looks like it.”

  The slow shaking of her head was oddly mechanical, a robot’s programmed routine. “She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. I mean—it’s not like her at all.”

  He stood near the bed, looking down on her, the red curls thick on her shoulders, her hands steepled in her lap. “In my experience,” he said, “no matter how well we think we know someone, there’s always a surprise lurking somewhere.”

  “Not this kind of surprise. Not with Erin.”

  “I’m sorry, Annie. But everything points to the conclusion that your sister went away on an unscheduled trip.”

  “Without telling me—or anyone? Without even leaving a note?”

  “It happens.”

  “But she didn’t take her Tegretol. Or her watch.”