by John Lutz
He slowed his pace to hers, and they walked together for a while. They were approaching a small stone church next to a boarded-up brick building. There was a dark passageway in between the two buildings. Verna attempted to change her direction a few degrees so she’d be walking away from the dark passage, but the man from the big car didn’t budge and let her bump herself into him. Verna began to be afraid.
“How do you know who I am?” she asked.
“I saw your name in the paper, so I looked you up. Tried to find your address and found that you have no address.”
“What is this? Am I owed some money?”
“With what’s going on, maybe you could get a book contract.”
She gave him a dubious look. “Me? What, am I famous? Am I missing my fifteen minutes?”
“Don’t you read the papers or watch the news on television?”
“Hah! I haven’t read a newspaper in months, and if you see a television set trailing behind me, let me know. Not that I could afford the electric bill.”
“You really should read the newspapers,” the man said. “About the rapist who served time for a crime he didn’t commit.”
“What have I got to do with that?”
“You really don’t remember?”
“I’m lucky if I remember if I got socks on.” They walked on a few steps, more slowly. “Really, how’d you know where to find me?”
“It wasn’t hard.”
“In New York?”
“I’m a cop.” the man said. He flashed a badge inside a thin leather folder. “We can find anyone.”
“That didn’t look like a police badge.”
“It is, though.”
“I don’t understand this,” Verna said uneasily. She trusted nothing and no one, and especially she didn’t trust this man.
She’d seen his name when he flashed his shield, but hazily. She couldn’t recall it. If she remembered it later, maybe she’d check him out tomorrow, phone a precinct house and make sure he was actually a cop.
If he was the real thing, that still didn’t mean Verna would talk to him. Right now, cops represented authority, and authority was what had hammered Verna into her present circumstances.
The man grinned over at her. “Whew! If we don’t slow down I won’t have any breath left to ask my questions.”
“Questions about what?”
They were at the passageway between the cathedral and the adjacent building. “Come in here where it’s quiet and we’re alone together and I’ll tell you,” he said.
“I don’t think so.”
He smiled. Shrugged.
That was when a police car came around the corner.
Miracles do happen.
Not that Verna was in any deep trouble; she could handle this guy.
But she couldn’t be sure.
She realized he was no longer gripping her arm.
When she turned to talk to him, he was gone.
Must have run down the dark passageway alongside the church. She stared into the dimness, but knew that with her eyes she couldn’t see him even if he was back there.
Well, she wasn’t going to follow him.
Verna held her head high and strolled past the oncoming police car. The cop who was driving glanced at her and the car slowed slightly. But it didn’t stop. That was fine with Verna. Maybe the guy who’d had her arm really was a plainclothes cop and the car was on its way to pick him up in the next block. That was how cops usually worked, in pairs.
Verna didn’t want to hang around and figure out any of this. All she’d been looking for was a place to sit down and eat the partial hamburger she’d found. This city was tough. It wouldn’t give her even that much.
Then she remembered the five dollars and figured she wasn’t so unlucky after all.
56
It required eyes that never quite closed.
Vitali and Mishkin had maintained a loose tail on Jock Sanderson for several days. Sanderson led a dull life. He left his apartment and went in to work about ten o’clock, wearing what looked like gray coveralls. Sometimes he wore regular casual clothes and carried the coveralls in a gym bag. Switching off the task of driving, one of the detectives followed Sanderson as he walked to his subway stop. The other simply drove there and waited, then left the parked car and picked up the tail. The car, and the first detective, would be waiting near the offices of Sweep ’Em Up when Sanderson arrived. Then they would tail the white van that transported Sanderson, along with other members of a cleanup crew, to whatever job they had for the night.
After that came boredom and a long night, with sleeping in shifts. Vitali and Mishkin had done this kind of work plenty of times and were used to it—inasmuch as anyone ever really got used to it. Both had learned the cops’ technique of almost sleeping, yet with part of the mind remaining alert and watchful. The watchfulness was accomplished through eyes that never quite closed.
By morning Vitali usually managed not to have been completely exasperated by Mishkin, and not to have injured Mishkin’s delicate feelings. Or Mishkin himself. As for Mishkin, he would seem unaffected except for being tired.
Then would come the daily routine in reverse, as Sanderson left work for home. Sometimes he’d leave directly from the job, and other times he’d return to Sweep ’Em Up in the white van and then go home from there. A normal, everyday, monotonous life. It was nothing like following a showgirl.
“This isn’t like following a showgirl,” Mishkin said, while watching the unmoving white van in his peripheral vision.
Beside him, Vitali said, “We’ve never followed a showgirl, Harold.”
“I’m imagining,” Mishkin said. “You must do that sometimes, Sal.”
“You’d be surprised, Harold, some of the things I imagine.”
Now and then Sanderson would eat out. Often he’d get takeout from a nearby deli. Sometimes he’d stop in at a small grocery store and stock up on simple food he could prepare in a microwave. He ate a lot of frozen pasta.
Vitali and Mishkin were patient. Varying their routine somewhat, they took advantage of slow-moving traffic that made it easy to follow Sanderson in the air-conditioned, unmarked car, even if he was on foot on his way to his subway stop. That way neither of them had to get out in the hot evening and walk. The traffic was so locked up that sometimes Sanderson, walking, would actually pull ahead of them for a while. They would catch up with him at intersections where he was waiting to cross. This kind of work required patience, as well as ways to counteract the boredom.
Vitali was driving the unmarked blue Ford tonight. He felt tired and irritable and by now doubted that Sanderson was anything but a poor ex-con who’d had his life turned upside down by a mistaken identity. He was on a treadmill of despair, and Vitali and Mishkin were on it right behind him.
Lounging next to Vitali, in the Ford’s passenger seat, Mishkin said, “I been thinking, Sal.” He continued watching the unsuspecting Sanderson through the windshield as he spoke. “Wouldn’t it be nice if this tail surprised us and panned out? Like maybe if Sanderson met a mysterious beautiful woman and they went someplace and talked like they had a big secret, maybe exchanged a brown package wrapped with string.”
“A MacGuffin,” Vitali said.
“Huh?”
“That’s what Hitchcock used to call packages like that, MacGuffins.”
“Who was MacGuffin?”
“Never mind, Harold.”
“What I’m talking about is a romantic assignation.”
“That isn’t going to happen, Harold.”
“It does in books.”
“We’re not in a book, Harold. Try to remember that.”
“How do you know we’re not, Sal?”
“Not what?”
“In a book.”
Vitali said nothing. Had his wrist draped over the top of the steering wheel. His gaze was fixed straight ahead on Sanderson. He knew that as long as the tail lasted, he’d simply have to endure Mishkin’s conversational m
eandering.
“You know that famous athlete that got in trouble because he was addicted to sex?” Mishkin asked.
“Do I know him?
“Of him?”
“Yeah.”
Vitali came more alert. Sanderson had stopped walking and was looking into the show window of an electronics shop. Only a few seconds passed before he walked on. Boredom again descended on the car.
“That athlete that checked himself into a sexual-addiction clinic, Sal. Ever think about sexual-addiction clinics? I mean, really consider them?”
“For myself, Harold?”
“Don’t try to be funny, Sal.”
Vitali said nothing.
“I been wondering what kind of places those are. I mean, even on the outside.”
“Like hospitals, I guess.”
“What sort of architecture?”
“Lots of towers, I imagine,” Vitali said. He didn’t move his head. His right wrist was still draped over the wheel.
“Yeah. I was thinking about the entrances. And the exits. Don’t forget the exits.”
Vitali gave Mishkin a look.
“Maybe dormers, Sal. Sets of big dormers on the roof.”
“Definitely big dormers,” Vitali said.
“Those people who get checked in there, Sal, how do you think they keep them apart?”
“I wouldn’t know, Harold. The doctors and staff, I guess.”
“These are addicts, Sal. What do you think they have for rooms? Do the doors have automatic locks? Are there little individual compounds topped with razor wire? Those people are like rabbits, Sal.”
Sanderson had reached his subway stop. He barely broke stride as he descended the concrete steps and disappeared underground.
Like a rabbit going down its hole, Vitali couldn’t help thinking.
Mishkin had the door open and was getting out. It was his turn to tail Sanderson on foot.
“I’ll pick you up outside Sweep ’Em Up,” Vitali told him.
“Try parking where you did before, Sal.” And Mishkin was out of the car and jogging toward the subway steps.
Vitali sat and watched Mishkin disappear underground.
Like another rabbit.
Or maybe more like one of those terriers bred to follow their prey into burrows.
“We’re sure Sanderson’s clean,” Vitali told Quinn, after five days on the tail.
Quinn nodded behind his desk. He’d already decided to end the tail. There were only so many suspects you could cover in the case. That was the problem, exactly as the Skinner had planned it. “Get some sleep and I’ll put you and Harold on something else.”
“Better use of manpower,” Vitali said.
“Weaver isn’t gonna like it that she was beat to a pulp for nothing.”
“How’s she doing?” Vitali asked.
“Out of the hospital. Her thoughts are a little scrambled, and she still has headaches. Renz has seen she gets medical leave, and she’s going to stay with her sister for a while.”
“So she’s out of the game on this one.”
“Like Sanderson,” Quinn said.
57
Edmundsville, 2008
Beth’s recommendation had worked. Link Evans was hired at Arch Manufacturing. He worked for a while on the line, but it didn’t take long for his bosses to see he had more to offer. As soon as seniority allowed an opening, he was promoted to forklift driver. Beth liked that. Link wasn’t so tired when he got home, and he could spend more time with Eddie.
There was no doubt in her mind that Link loved Eddie. They’d play catch sometimes in the evenings until Eddie got tired of throwing the ball. Link was convinced Eddie had baseball talent. Maybe he was right. Beth was no judge.
As Eddie got older, he hadn’t filled out physically in the way Link expected. He remained a spindly kid. Though he could still play ball well, his real talent seemed to be in scholastics. Eddie had been a whiz in Edmundsville primary school, with grades at the top of his class. Not only that, he was an amiable kid well liked by teachers and his fellow students.
High school was only slightly more difficult for Eddie.
That was all fine with Link. He bragged on Eddie’s grades. It was obvious that Eddie was going to be more of an intellect than an athlete. Not that he and Eddie didn’t still play catch.
In fact, they played catch even more often than when Eddie was younger.
There was something about these relentless games of catch, Beth thought. It was simply tossing a sphere back and forth, yet it forged a bond between father and son that a woman might not understand. Beth didn’t, quite. It might have something to do with giving and receiving, and then giving back. Beth wondered, had men played catch with their sons through the ages? Had primitive men and their sons tossed stones back and forth?
She bet they did.
Men were still a puzzle to Beth.
“Don’t you guys ever get tired?” she asked one night, from the wooden Adirondack chair they’d bought and Link and Eddie had painted.
Plop! Went the baseball into Eddie’s glove. Eddie grinned and fired it back. Plop!
“Tired of what?” Link asked. He’d put on a few pounds while working and eating regularly, but he was still a lean man, and athletic.
“You know. Playing catch.”
“No, it’s natural.” Talking to her had made Link glance over and drop the next pitch from Eddie. He bent low to pick up the ball and tossed it back sidearm and hard.
Plop!
“Natural, Mom!” Eddie said, with a touch of braggadocio.
Beth sat back with her eyes closed, sipped lemonade, and listened to the rhythm of summer and growing up. Hers was, she decided, a good life to be living.
Except for . . . small things now and then.
Plop!
Well, maybe the same small thing. It was something she hadn’t yet let crystallize into an actual suspicion. Her mind still danced around it, and only at odd times when the notion caught her off guard. Sometimes it was because of a certain light, or a certain angle, or a manner of speaking.
Acquired, Beth thought. It all could be acquired.
But not the angle of nose, the eyebrows, and the dark eyes.
Imagination?
Beth didn’t know what to think, what she’d do if she opened the gates and let the suspicion take root. Let it become serious.
The lazy rhythm of the ball zipping from one glove to the other momentarily ceased—a break in the order of the universe—and then continued. Somebody had dropped one.
It had been years, another world, and she’d caught only a fleeting glimpse of her attacker. But people’s looks could change over time, especially when they gained or lost a lot of weight. Link was about the right age. And the rape had occurred at night. She’d seen her rapist only by moonlight.
But it was true—at least she sometimes told (admitted to?) herself—that with more weight, and with a full and darker beard, Link might fit Vincent Salas’s description.
Beth tried, as she too often did these days, to recall the glimpses she’d had of her attacker so long ago, reimagining over and over the bulk of his body, the quick movement of an arm and hand to snare her wrist and pin it to the ground, the line of his bearded cheek as he raised his head to glance around, the quick white glint of an eye in moonlight.
Crazy!
Beth bent her thoughts in other directions. She should be immensely pleased that Link and Eddie got along so well. Link was a wonderful, loving, and attentive father. And husband.
He’d gotten Eddie interested in something beyond baseball and fishing—coin collecting. Link had become something of a serious coin collector, well beyond the stage of wheat pennies and coins with silver content. He’d even begun attending conventions, and after each such gathering of serious collectors, he would return with coins he’d bought (as an investment), and some old coin or other for Eddie. Eddie had a growing collection of his own.
Coins. Eddie and Link would sit for ho
urs arranging and talking about their collections, what Link seemed to see as the romance of rare coins. Beth saw rare coins merely as something else to foster even stronger bonding between Eddie and Link. A bonding and a closeness that threatened to block out Beth.
Is that what I’m worried about? That I’ll be odd woman out?
She actually laughed out loud, half amused and half ashamed of herself.
“Something funny?” Link yelled from where he stood in front of the wire fence in case the ball got past him.
“Me,” Beth said. She smiled. “Nothing you two guys’d be interested in.”
She closed her eyes, sipped more lemonade, and listened to the ball slapping into the oiled leather gloves, back and forth, two-way catch.
Exclusively.
58
New York, the present
Verna Pound had spent all her money in a deli. She’d had only enough for junk food displayed in the racks, and she tried to stretch it as far as possible. The dark-skinned woman behind the counter—maybe Indian or Middle Eastern—didn’t even bother with the extra three cents Verna owed her for the day-old cupcakes and apple turnover. She wanted Verna out of the deli as soon as possible. Not after making a big scene. Just out. Verna’s presence was bad for business.
On the way out, Verna used her body to conceal that she was stealing a plastic bottle of water. The dark-skinned woman might have said something behind her, but Verna didn’t stop to find out. There was a certain cost to doing business in some Manhattan neighborhoods. Besides, water shouldn’t be something a person had to steal.
Back out on the sidewalk, lugging the white plastic bag of what for her would be one of her better meals all week, she made her way toward Ben’s for Men’s. It was a low-tomedium-priced men’s clothing store with an entrance that was a dog-legged tunnel of display windows full of suits, coats, and various other men’s apparel. The shop was closed until tomorrow, so the windows were dark, but the deep and concealing shadowed tunnel was accessible. The recessed entranceway was one of the few places in the neighborhood where Verna could feel almost completely safe and relax.