Whistleblower

by Tess Gerritsen

Cathy lowered herself onto the trellis. Branches clawed her face as she scrambled down the vine. An instant after she landed on the dew-soaked grass, Victor dropped beside her.

  At once they were on their feet and sprinting for the cover of shrubbery. Just as they rolled behind the azalea bushes, they heard a second-floor window slide open, and then Jack’s voice complaining loudly: “I know my rights! This is an illegal search! I’m going to call my lawyer!”

  Don’t let him see us! prayed Cathy, burrowing frantically into the bush. She felt Victor’s body curl around her back, his arms pulling her tightly to him, his breath hot and ragged against her neck. For an eternity they lay shivering in the grass as mist swirled around them.

  “You see?” they heard Jack say. “There’s no one here but me. Or would you like to check the garage?”

  The window slid shut.

  Victor gave Cathy a little push. “Go,” he whispered. “The end of the hedge. We’ll run from there.”

  On hands and knees she crawled along the row of azalea bushes. Her soaked jeans were icy and her palms scratched and bleeding, but she was too numbed by terror to feel any pain. All her attention was focused on moving forward. Victor was crawling close behind her. When she felt him bump up against her hip, it occurred to her what a ridiculous view he had, her rump swaying practically under his nose.

  She reached the last bush and stopped to shove a handful of tangled hair off her face. “That house next?” she asked.

  “Go for it!”

  They both took off like scared rabbits, dashing across the twenty yards of lawn between houses. Once they reached the cover of the next house, they didn’t stop. They kept running, past parked cars and early-morning pedestrians. Five blocks later, they ducked into a coffee shop. Through the front window, they glanced out at the street, watching for signs of pursuit. All they saw was the typical Monday morning bustle: the stop-and-go traffic, the passersby bundled up in scarves and overcoats.

  From the grill behind them came the hiss and sizzle of bacon. The smell of freshly brewed coffee wafted from the counter burner. The aromas were almost painful; they reminded Cathy that she and Victor probably had a total of forty dollars between them. Damn it, why hadn’t she begged, borrowed or stolen some cash from Jack?

  “What now?” she asked, half hoping he’d suggest blowing the rest of their cash on breakfast.

  He scanned the street. “Let’s go on.”

  “Where?”

  “Hickey’s studio.”

  “Oh.” She sighed. Another long walk, and all on an empty stomach.

  Outside, a car passed by bearing the bumper sticker: Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life.

  Lord, I hope it gets better than this, she thought. Then she followed Victor out the door and into the morning chill.

  FIELD SUPERVISOR Larry Dafoe was sitting at his desk, pumping away at his executive power chair. Upper body strength, he always said, was the key to success as a man. Bulk out those muscles pull!, fill out that size forty-four jacket pull!, and what you got was a pair of shoulders that’d impress any woman, intimidate any rival. And with this snazzy 700-buck model, you didn’t even have to get out of your chair.

  Sam Polowski watched his superior strain at the system of wires and pulleys and thought the device looked more like an exotic instrument of torture.

  “What you gotta understand,” gasped Dafoe, “is that there are other pull! issues at work here. Things you know nothing about.”

  “Like what?” asked Polowski.

  Dafoe released the handles and looked up, his face sheened with a healthy sweat. “If I was at liberty to tell you, don’t you think I already would’ve?”

  Polowski looked at the gleaming black exercise handles, wondering whether he’d benefit from an executive power chair. Maybe a souped-up set of biceps was what he needed to get a little respect around this office.

  “I still don’t see what the point is,” he said. “Putting Victor Holland in the hot seat.”

  “The point,” said Dafoe, “is that you don’t call the shots.”

  “I gave Holland my word he’d be left out of this mess.”

  “He’s part of the mess! First he claims he has evidence, then he pulls a vanishing act.”

  “That’s partly my fault. I never made it to the rendezvous.”

  “Why hasn’t he tried to contact you?”

  “I don’t know.” Polowski sighed and shook his head. “Maybe he’s dead.”

  “Maybe we just need to find him.” Dafoe reached for the exercise handles. “Maybe you need to get to work on the Lanzano file. Or maybe you should just go home. You look terrible.”

  “Yeah. Sure.” Polowski turned. As he left the office, he could hear Dafoe once again huffing and puffing. He went to his desk, sat down and contemplated his collection of cold capsules, aspirin and cough syrup. He took a double dose of each. Then he reached in his briefcase and pulled out the Viratek file.

  It was his own private collection of scrambled notes and phone numbers and news clippings. He sifted through them, stopping to ponder once again the link between Holland and the woman Catherine Weaver. He’d first seen her name on the hospital admission sheet, and had later been startled to hear of her connection to the murdered Garberville woman. Too many coincidences, too many twists and turns. Was there something obvious here he was missing? Might the woman have an answer or two?

  He reached for the telephone and dialed the Garberville police department. They would know how to reach their witness. And maybe she would know how to find Victor Holland. It was a long shot but Sam Polowski was an inveterate horseplayer. He had a penchant for long shots.

  THE MAN ringing his doorbell looked like a tree stump dressed in a brown polyester suit. Jack opened the door and said, “Sorry, I’m not buying today.”

  “I’m not selling anything, Mr. Zuckerman,” said the man. “I’m with the FBI.”

  Jack sighed. “Not again.”

  “I’m Special Agent Sam Polowski. I’m trying to locate a woman named Catherine Weaver, formerly Zuckerman. I believe she—”

  “Don’t you guys ever know when to quit?”

  “Quit what?”

  “One of your agents was here this morning. Talk to him!”

  The man frowned. “One of our agents?”

  “Yeah. And I just might register a complaint against him. Barged right in here without a warrant and started tramping all over my house.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Oh, I don’t know! Dark hair, terrific build. But he could’ve used a course in charm school.”

  “Was he about my height?”

  “Taller. Skinnier. Lots more hair.”

  “Did he give you his name? It wasn’t Mac Braden, was it?”

  “Naw, he didn’t give me any name.”

  Polowski pulled out his badge. Jack squinted at the words: Federal Bureau of Investigation. “Did he show you one of these?” asked Polowski.

  “No. He just asked about Cathy and some guy named Victor Holland. Whether I knew how to find them.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  “That jerk?” Jack laughed. “I wouldn’t bother to give him the time of day. I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him about—” Jack paused and cleared his throat. “I wasn’t going to tell him anything. Even if I knew. Which I don’t.”

  Polowski slipped his badge into his pocket, all the time gazing steadily at Jack. “I think we should talk, Mr. Zuckerman.”

  “What about?”

  “About your ex-wife. About the fact she’s in big trouble.”

  “That,” sighed Jack, “I already know.”

  “She’s going to get hurt. I can’t fill you in on all the details because I’m still in the dark myself. But I do know one woman’s already been hit. Your wife—”

  “My ex-wife.”

  “Your ex-wife could be next.”

  Jack, unconvinced, merely looked at him.

  “It’s your duty as a citizen
to tell me what you know,” Polowski reminded him.

  “My duty. Right.”

  “Look, cooperate, and you and me, we’ll get along just fine. Give me grief, and I’ll give you grief.” Polowski smiled. Jack didn’t. “Now, Mr. Zuckerman. Hey, can I call you Jack? Jack, why don’t you tell me where she is? Before it’s too late. For both of you.”

  Jack scowled at him. He drummed his fingers against the door frame. He debated. At last he stepped aside. “As a law-abiding citizen, I suppose it is my duty.” Grudgingly, he waved the man in. “Oh, just come in, Polowski. I’ll tell you what I know.”

  THE WINDOW shattered, raining slivers into the gloomy space beyond.

  Cathy winced at the sound. “Sorry, Hickey,” she said under her breath.

  “We’ll make it up to him,” said Victor, knocking off the remaining shards. “We’ll send him a nice fat check. You see anyone?”

  She glanced up and down the alley. Except for a crumpled newspaper tumbling past the trash cans, nothing moved. A few blocks away, car horns blared, the sounds of another Union Street traffic jam.

  “All clear,” she whispered.

  “Okay.” Victor draped his windbreaker over the sill. “Up you go.”

  He gave her a lift to the window. She clambered through and landed among the glass shards. Seconds later, Victor dropped down beside her.

  They were standing in the studio dressing room. Against one wall hung a rack of women’s lingerie; against the other were makeup tables and a long mirror.

  Victor frowned at a cloud of peach silk flung over one of the chairs. “What kind of photos does your friend take, anyway?”

  “Hickey specializes in what’s politely known as ‘boudoir portraits.’”

  Victor’s startled gaze turned to a black lace negligee hanging from a wall hook. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

  “What do you think it means?”

  “You know.”

  She headed into the next room. “Hickey insists it’s not pornography. It’s tasteful erotic art….” She stopped in her tracks as she came face-to-face with a photo blowup on the wall. Naked limbs—eight, maybe more—were entwined in a sort of human octopus. Nothing was left to the imagination. Nothing at all.

  “Tasteful,” Victor said dryly.

  “That must be one of his, uh, commercial assignments.”

  “I wonder what product they were selling.”

  She turned and found herself staring at another photograph. This time it was two women, drop-dead gorgeous and wearing not a stitch.

  “Another commercial assignment?” Victor inquired politely over her shoulder.

  She shook her head. “Don’t ask.”

  In the front room they found a week’s worth of mail piled up beneath the door slot, darkroom catalogues and advertising flyers. The roll of film Cathy had mailed the day before was not yet in the mound.

  “I guess we just sit around and wait for the postman,” she said.

  He nodded. “Seems like a safe-enough place. Any chance your friend keeps food around?”

  “I seem to remember a refrigerator in the other room.”

  She led Victor into what Hickey had dubbed his “shooting gallery.” Cathy flipped the wall switch and the vast room was instantly illuminated by a dazzling array of spotlights.

  “So this is where he does it,” said Victor, blinking in the sudden glare. He stepped over a jumble of electrical cords and slowly circled the room, regarding with humorous disbelief the various props. It was a strange collection of objects: a genuine English phone booth, a street bench, an exercise bicycle. In a place of honor sat a four-poster bed. The ruffled coverlet was Victorian; the handcuffs dangling from the bedposts were not.

  Victor picked up one of the cuffs and let it fall again. “Just how good a friend is this Hickey guy, anyway?”

  “None of this stuff was here when he shot me a month ago.”

  “He photographed you?” Victor turned and stared at her.

  She flushed, imagining the images that must be flashing through his mind. She could feel his gaze undressing her, posing her in a sprawl across that ridiculous four-poster bed. With the handcuffs, no less.

  “It wasn’t like—like these other photos,” she protested. “I mean, I just did it as a favor….”

  “A favor?”

  “It was a purely commercial shot!”

  “Oh.”

  “I was fully dressed. In overalls, as a matter of fact. I was supposed to be a plumber.”

  “A lady plumber?”

  “I was an emergency stand-in. One of his models didn’t show up that day, and he needed someone with an ordinary face. I guess that’s me. Ordinary. And it really was just my face.”

  “And your overalls.”

  “Right.”

  They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

  “I can guess what you were thinking,” she said.

  “I don’t even want to tell you what I was thinking.” He turned and glanced around the room. “Didn’t you say there was some food around here?”

  She crossed the room to the refrigerator. Inside she found a shelf of film plus a jar of sweet pickles, some rubbery carrots and half a salami. In the freezer they discovered real treasures: ground Sumatran coffee and a loaf of sourdough bread.

  Grinning, she turned to him. “A feast!”

  They sat together on the four-poster bed and gnawed on salami and half-frozen sourdough, all washed down with cups of coffee. It was a bizarre little picnic, paper plates with pickles and carrots resting in their laps, the spotlights glaring down like a dozen hot suns from the ceiling.

  “Why did you say that about yourself?” he asked, watching her munch a carrot.

  “Say what?”

  “That you’re ordinary. So ordinary that you get cast as the lady plumber?”

  “Because I am ordinary.”

  “I don’t think so. And I happen to be a pretty good judge of character.”

  She looked up at a wall poster featuring one of Hickey’s super models. The woman stared back with a look of glossy confidence. “Well, I certainly don’t measure up to that.”

  “That,” he said, “is pure fantasy. That isn’t a real woman, but an amalgam of makeup, hairspray and fake eyelashes.”

  “Oh, I know that. That’s my job, turning actors into some moviegoer’s fantasy. Or nightmare, as the case may be.” She reached into the jar and fished out the last pickle. “No, I really meant underneath it all. Deep inside, I feel ordinary.”

  “I think you’re quite extraordinary. And after last night, I should know.”

  She gazed down, at the limp carrot stretched out like a little corpse across the paper plate. “There was a time—I suppose there’s always that time, for everyone, when we’re still young, when we feel special. When we feel the world’s meant just for us. The last time I felt that way was when I married Jack.” She sighed. “It didn’t last long.”

  “Why did you marry him?”

  “I don’t know. Dazzle? I was only twenty-three, a mere apprentice on the set. He was the director.” She paused. “He was God.”

  “He impressed you, did he?”

  “Jack can be very impressive. He can turn on the power, the charisma, and just overwhelm a gal. Then there was the champagne, the suppers, the flowers. I think what attracted him to me was that I didn’t immediately fall for him. That I wasn’t swooning at his every look. He thought of me as a challenge, the one he finally conquered.” She gave him a rueful look. “That accomplished, he moved onto bigger and better things. That’s when I realized that I wasn’t particularly special. That I’m really just a perfectly ordinary woman. It’s not a bad feeling. It’s not as if I go through life longing to be someone different, someone special.”

  “Then who do you consider special?”

  “Well, my grandmother. But she’s dead.”

  “Venerable grandmothers always make the list.”

  “Okay, then. Mother Teresa.”
>
  “She’s on everyone’s list.”

  “Kate Hepburn. Gloria Steinem. My friend Sarah…” Her voice faded. Looking down, she added softly: “But she’s dead, too.”

  Gently he took her hand. With a strange sense of wonder she watched his long fingers close over hers and thought about how the strength she felt in that grasp reflected the strength of the man himself. Jack, for all his dazzle and polish, had never inspired a fraction of the confidence she now felt in Victor. No man ever had.

  He was watching her with quiet sympathy. “Tell me about Sarah,” he said.

  Cathy swallowed, trying to stem the tears. “She was absolutely lovely. I don’t mean in that way.” She nodded at the photo of Hickey’s picture-perfect model. “I mean, in an inner sort of way. It was this look in her eyes. A perfect calmness. As though she’d found exactly what she wanted while all the rest of us were still grubbing around for lost treasure. I don’t think she was born like that. She came to it, all by herself. In college, we were both pretty unsure of ourselves. Marriage certainly didn’t help either of us. My divorce—it was nothing short of devastating. But Sarah’s divorce only seemed to make her stronger. Better able to take care of herself. When she finally got pregnant, it was exactly as she planned it. There wasn’t a father, you see, just a test tube. An anonymous donor. Sarah used to say that the primeval family unit wasn’t man, woman and child. It was just woman and child. I thought she was brave, to take that step. She was a lot braver than I could ever be….” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, Sarah was special. Some people simply are.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Some people are.”

  She looked up at him. He was staring off at the far wall, his gaze infinitely sad. What had etched those lines of pain in his face? She wondered if lines so deep could ever be erased. There were some losses one never got over, never accepted.

  Softly she asked, “What was your wife like?”

  He didn’t answer at first. She thought: Why did I ask that? Why did I have to bring up such terrible memories?

  He said, “She was a kind woman. That’s what I’ll always remember about her. Her kindness.” He looked at Cathy and she sensed it wasn’t sadness she saw in those eyes, but acceptance.

  “What was her name?”