Obsessed

by Rick R. Reed

  "No, Ma. Maybe later."

  "Well, okay." He watched as his mother sat back down on the couch, settling herself in for an evening in front of the TV. Randy wondered what his parents had done before they had a television.

  Randy lay in the darkness of his room much later that night, still dressed. In his hand he held the lighter, feeling over and over again the small scratches, the grooved indentations of the engraving, the dividing line where the lighter opened. He opened and flicked it, watched as the flame gave a glow to the room, wondered about the maniac who had used it.

  He flung the lighter to the floor and the phone rang.

  Randy picked it up quickly, not wanting it to wake his parents. He glanced over at the alarm clock on the nightstand. One forty-five.

  "Hello."

  "Randy?"

  "Yes?" Randy tried to place the woman's voice.

  "What are you doing? You weren't asleep, were you?"

  "No."

  "I didn't think you would be." The woman laughed softly, almost to herself.

  Randy felt annoyed. "Who is this?"

  "Never mind who I am. But you can consider me a friend. And I have some information that might make it a lot easier for you to sleep at night."

  Randy felt cold all of a sudden. "What are you talking about?"

  "Don't you know?" The woman laughed again.

  Randy could barely get the words out. "No, I don't know. Now, what is this?"

  "I know something. I know . . . who killed your wife." The last came out in a sing-song voice, childish and taunting.

  Randy bolted up in bed. He felt his heart pounding. "What are you talking about?"

  The woman's voice was calm. "Peace of mind doesn't come cheap."

  "Who? Who do you think killed her?" Randy felt himself begin to cry.

  "Peace of mind doesn't come cheap. Not here or anywhere. What's it worth to you?"

  Randy slammed the phone down again and again, sobbing.

  Pat Young hung up after the first click. She didn't expect much from her first contact with Randy Mazursky. Give him a little time, she thought, he'll come around. In a week he'll be waiting by the phone, praying you'll call him back.

  Pat laughed. She thought about how much Randy would be willing to pay to find out who Maggie's killer was. Probably not much, because he didn't have much. But a few thousand . . . surely.

  Pat picked up the telephone once more and dialed a different number.

  Anne is in a bare warehouse loft. Behind her, frosted glass windows, crisscrossed with wire and smudged with layers of filth. Beneath her, dirty and scarred wooden floors, beyond any hope of repair. On either side of her, crumbling brick walls. One is spray-painted with a blood red heart. Inside: "Anne Loves Joe." A click. Bright lights. Someone is photographing her. She can't see; the lights shine in her face. A figure. Backlit. Dark. Indistinguishable.

  Click.

  The ringing of the telephone brought her out of her nightmare.

  "Hello," she mumbled into the phone.

  Click.

  When Randy awakened the next morning, he felt as if he had been awake the entire night. He still wore the same clothes he had worn yesterday. The sun shining in the window showed it was late in the day. The alarm clock told him it was almost noon.

  It was a good thing it was Thursday and he had the day off.

  The house was quiet as he undressed and grabbed a towel for the shower. As he passed his parents' bedroom he remembered they had been gone for hours, working.

  He remembered the phone call from last night.

  A crank. It had to be a crank. Unless—and this was the part that chilled him—it was the killer who called. Randy turned the water on, hot, and stepped into the shower.

  After the shower and a cup of coffee, Randy thumbed through the yellow pages until he came to private detectives. He had no idea there would be such an array. He chose one in Oak Park, because it was closest to him.

  * * *

  The detective wasn't what the TV shows made private detectives out to be. He was not debonair, handsome, rugged, witty . . . none of those things. He did not wear a raincoat, suck a lollipop, or work with his wife as a team. He had no gimmicks. His name was William Masterson and he had occupied the same office space for twenty years. He was short (five three), fifty pounds overweight, smoked too many cigars, and had gray hair and a big, black mustache. Large, pinkish lips and jowls gave him a bulldog look. His voice was gruff.

  "What can I do for you, son?"

  Randy sat on the opposite side of the metal desk, uncertain how to begin. "Maybe you could just start by telling me how much you charge."

  He laughed. "They all want that up front. Not that I can blame them. Right off, I charge a five-thousand-dollar retainer. Then I usually ask for a fair hourly rate and expenses. Now, what's your problem? Wife trouble?"

  Randy laughed in spite of himself at the macabre humor of the question.

  "Well, I guess you could put it that way." Suddenly Randy's eyes were brimming with tears. He wiped them angrily away and took a deep breath. "Mr. Masterson, somebody killed my wife. I'm trying to find out who. Now, I have some evidence"—he took the lighter out and put it on the desk—"and I can give you all the information you might need to know. I also had a call last night from someone who claimed to know who the killer was. I . . ." Randy would have continued, but he noticed the detective shaking his head.

  "Son, this is police business. I can't get involved. Now, my advice to you is to give that lighter to the police. You've already ruined what fingerprints might have been left on it, I'm sure. But it could help a lot. I don't think any private detective would get involved in something like this, not without at least working with the police. At least not a good one. Plenty will take your money. This isn't the movies."

  "Just wait. I—"

  The detective stood. "No. Son, I just can't help you."

  Randy stood. "Okay. Have it your way."

  "Take my advice and go to the police."

  "Sure."

  Randy closed the door.

  14

  Anne and Joe sat on a carved wooden bench, behind them the colors of autumn and part of a weathered barn. Joe alone, on some rocks near Lake Michigan, his face blurred in the mist from the waves. A close-up of Joe, his smile lighting up a face handsome enough to be Anne's masculine counterpart in modeling. An older photograph, black and white, perhaps college graduation: Joe with long hair, parted in the middle and pulled back into a ponytail, full beard and mustache. A recent color snapshot: Joe standing in a kitchen, leaning against a counter and raising a glass of champagne to the photographer. Another black-and-white: Joe on a living room couch, clean shaven, hair clipped short.

  Nick spread the photographs out before him on his desk blotter. Morning light came in through his window, leaving a pale trail of light

  across the photographs. Anne had given him the photographs the night before, meeting him at a coffee shop on the corner of Sherman and Clark in Evanston. They had sat in a booth with orange vinyl seats and a plastic table. She had explained, "I tried to get a good sampling, in case he's changed his appearance." He had bought her coffee and himself pie and coffee. They had talked. She told him how she had been happy with Joe during the first years of their marriage, and how things had gradually disintegrated. He had isolated himself, she told him. Maybe it had started with his decision to leave the large advertising agency where he was next in line for a position as a creative director. Whatever it was, he had grown further and further away from her until the two found they had little to talk about when they were alone together—daily reports on their jobs, changes in the weather. The only thing that remained strong between them was sex. She stopped herself then, looking up at him with the faintest tinge of rose in her cheeks, embarrassed at the curious look Nick knew he had failed to hide. "Finally," she had said, sipping the last of her coffee, "it seemed he wasn't with me even when he was home. I could tell he was preoccupied with somethin
g else, looking ahead to some future moment I knew he wouldn't share with me." Nick watched as Anne lowered her head, staring at the table. He wondered how a man could cheat on such a beautiful wife. He reached over then and covered her hand with his. She didn't move away from him. She let him drive her home, under the pretense he was meeting someone in the city.

  He had no one to meet.

  Nick gathered up the photographs and put them in his jacket pocket. He straightened his tie and pulled on his gray overcoat. Anne had told him she had called every YMCA in the area and had found no Joe MacAree registered. Nick knew that meant nothing, although he couldn't understand why the guy felt he needed to hide.

  Anne had also mentioned a small hotel in the Rogers Park area of Chicago. It was a boarding house, really, and Joe had lived there when he first graduated from Iowa and had moved to Chicago. He always had good memories of the place and liked to drive by, just to see if it was still in business. The hotel was called The Pratt, named for the street it was on.

  Nick decided to start there.

  The Pratt stood, a dirty white brick building, bunched close to other dirty white brick buildings, all of them exuding a faded elegance and an air of slowly going downhill. Parking was tight, the streets clogged with beat-up and rusting older cars and newer Japanese economy cars. Many of the apartment buildings had been turned into condominiums. There were for sale signs everywhere.

  Nick parked his car two blocks away from the hotel. He pulled his overcoat collar up and dug deep into his pockets as he walked into a winter wind blowing off the lake.

  Inside the hotel he saw a woman behind a

  desk. She had dyed red hair and a cigarette dangling from her lips. She wore a cotton housedress and had drawn her lips in larger than they really were with orange lipstick. When she saw Nick she stopped sorting mail, took the cigarette out of her mouth, and smiled.

  "Lookin' for a room?" she asked as Nick drew near. He noticed she spoke much too loud, and then saw the hearing aid in her ear.

  "Actually, no," Nick said, speaking up.

  "Well, what is it you've come for?"

  "I'm trying to find a friend of mine. I got a hunch he might be staying here. He always liked it here."

  The woman smiled and nodded. She stooped down and brought out a blue binder from a shelf beneath the counter. She slid it toward him. "You're welcome to take a look at the register."

  'Thanks," Nick opened the register and began looking at all the names registered from about a week ago, looking for some clue that might give Joe away even if he did use a false name and address.

  But he found nothing.

  "Sorry," he said to the woman, sliding the register back to her. "I don't see his name in here." Nick took out one of the recent photographs he had of Joe and placed it on the counter. "Doesn't look familiar to you, does he?"

  "What?" she asked, picking up the photograph.

  "Does he look familiar to you?"

  "Oh, he's a handsome fella."

  "But have you seen him before?"

  "Why? Is he in some kind of trouble?"

  "What makes you think that?"

  "Well, you didn't see his name in the register . . ."

  "Oh! No, he's not in any trouble. I'm just trying to locate him to give him back some money I owe him." Nick paused for a moment, thinking. "He's kind of eccentric. It would be just like him to register under another name." Nick smiled at her. "Just for the hell of it."

  The woman stared at the picture. "He sure is good-lookin'. He could be a movie actor."

  "So you'd remember if he'd been in here?" Nick was almost ready to give up.

  "I might. But I see lots of people coming and going." She shrugged: "Nature of the business." She handed him back the photograph. "I'm getting older. Don't remember things as well as I used to."

  Nick didn't like to use bribes, thinking it was a waste of his client's money, but he thought the woman was hinting. He took a ten-dollar bill out of his wallet and placed it on the counter. She snatched it up and Nick watched it disappear into one of the pockets of her aqua housedress.

  "Memory's gettin' better," she said, and winked.

  There was a pause. Nick slipped her another ten and watched it disappear.

  "He was here," the old woman spoke slowly. "He stayed for a few days. Checked out this morning." She brought out the register and opened it. Pointing with an orange-frosted fingernail, she located the name Alex Waters. "Here's his registration."

  Nick copied the name down in a pocket notebook. "Did he leave a forwarding address or anything like that?"

  She shook her head. "No. People in here usually don't. I don't ask anymore and they usually don't say."

  "Really?" Nick asked, reaching for his wallet.

  She caught his hand. "Really."

  "While he was here, did you get to know him at all?"

  "Not really. Like I say, I try to mind my own business. There's a lot to do, runnin' this place."

  "I imagine."

  "I mean, I'm friendly when they come to this desk, but beyond that I just don't have time to be bothered. This one, though, did impress me." She smiled bashfully at Nick. "I may be gettin' up in years, but I still notice a pretty face when I see one. And he was a looker." She laughed. "But he was a weird bird, that one. Got kinda worse-lookin' every day. Didn't shave, didn't seem like he even washed. When he checked out this morning, I could smell the booze on his breath. And that was eight thirty! Said he was gonna find his wife."

  "Well, Mrs. . . ."

  "Mayo. And that's Miss."

  "Miss Mayo, you've given me a lot of help. Thanks a lot."

  "Thank you," she said, patting her pocket.

  Nick found a small Greek restaurant near Loyola University and stopped there for lunch.

  While he waited for his avgolemono and Greek salad to be served, he called Anne.

  She answered on the first ring. She sounded breathless, as if she was waiting for someone to call.

  "Yeah, this is Nick MontPierre."

  "Oh, hello. I'm glad you called. Did you find anything out?"

  "Your hunch was right. He had been staying at The Pratt."

  She sighed, the relief obvious. "Then you've found him. Were you able to see him at all?"

  "He wasn't there."

  "So what will you do? Just watch the hotel until he comes back?" *

  "No, you don't understand. He checked out this morning. Left no forwarding address."

  "Damn."

  "But listen: There's hope. He told the woman at the desk he was going to look up his wife."

  Anne was silent for a moment. "I don't know if I want to see him."

  "You've got to, Anne. It's the only way I'll ever be able to put a tail on him and find out what's really going on."

  "Surely he'll turn up. You can watch for him at some of his freelance contacts. I mean, he'll have to have some money sooner or later."

  "Anne, this is the only way. Listen, I'll be at this place called The Greek Fisherman for the next hour or so. Copy down this number: 555-8762. If he contacts you I want you to set up a time to meet with him, and then I want you to call me so I can be there when he shows up." "You'd only scare him away. I don't think this will work."

  "Will you listen to me? I'm not going to let him know I'm there. It's just so I can follow him."

  "I don't know."

  "All right. It's your money." Nick hung up the phone.

  He waited. A minute later it rang. 'Yeah?"

  Anne's voice came over the line, breathy and uncertain. "Okay. I'll see him."

  "Call me when you have the time you're going to meet."

  "Yes. What if he doesn't call while you're there?"

  "After I'm done I'll come over to your place. If that's okay. We can wait for his call together."

  "That would be fine."

  "Well, let's keep the line clear."

  "What if he doesn't call first? What if he just shows up here?"

  "Make an excuse and cal
l me. If I'm not here, I'm on my way. I'll be waiting in your lobby. If I buzz you and he's up there, pretend I'm a salesman. Got that?"

  "Yes."

  "I'll be waiting for him. Then maybe we can find out what the hell's going on."

  He listened as she hung up the phone.

  The phone rang. Once. Twice. Three times. Anne stood over it, her hand poised, listening to its ring. Finally, after seven rings, she picked it up. She didn't say anything.

  "Babe? Anne? Honey, it's Joe."

  He sounded so far away. She didn't know if the distance was in the connection or her mind.

  "Yes?" she whispered.

  "Honey, I need to see you. I know I said I wouldn't bother you. But I won't take long. I just need to talk with you for a little while. . . ."

  "Where are you staying?"

  "At some Y. That's not important. Can I come over for a little bit?"

  "Joe, you promised you'd stay away."

  "And I have. Please, Anne." She had never heard such desperation in his voice. He was acting like a child, whining and begging. She wondered why she'd ever loved him.

  She didn't want to see him. Not yet. But she said, "You can come over, Joe, but you can't stay long. Just a half hour. Do you understand?"

  "Yes." He hung up the phone. Anne felt chilled.

  She sat down and dialed the number of the restaurant Nick had given her. He answered quickly. She explained Joe was on his way.

  Til be right there."

  Fifteen minutes later Anne heard a key being fitted into a lock. She was surprised. She had forgotten he had his own set of keys to the apartment. She went from the bedroom into the living room and waited for the door to open.

  Joe was a different man. His clothes—jeans and a flannel shirt—were dirty and wrinkled. There was a large stain on one of the legs of his jeans. His overcoat looked rumpled, as if he had slept in it. He hadn't shaved for days and she smelled alcohol on his breath. Its scent filled the room, combining with the smell of his perspiration.

  "What's happened to you?" Her words came out stunned. There was too much caring behind them.

  "I've been so lonely without you. I don't care anymore." He started to cry and stepped toward her. She moved across the room, putting a table between them. "Why don't you sit down?" Anne gestured toward one of the chairs.