by Gayle Wilson
Please, God, no, she prayed, tears pricking behind her eyes.
She closed them, denying the moisture, again telling herself this could be anyone. Dan. Dwight's mother. Detective Cochran. The restaurant. Every phone call she received for the rest of her life wasn't going to be like the one last night.
As she stood there, paralyzed by dread, she heard Toby return. She opened her eyes to find him standing in the kitchen doorway, watching her. His head was cocked, as if he were wondering why she hadn't joined him. After that unaccustomed bout of exercise, he was probably ready for his supper.
Feed Toby, she told herself. Then she could worry about whatever was on the machine. She didn't have to listen to it now. There would be plenty of time to do that after she'd tended to the dog.
Whatever the message was, it was only a voice. Only the recording of a voice, she amended, deliberately distancing herself from what was on that tape. Someone's idea of a joke. She grasped at Cochran's explanation, the same one she had angrily rejected last night.
She crossed the room, giving the phone a wide berth. When she reached the kitchen, it was as if she had made it through some kind of emotional gauntlet. She didn't have to look at that blinking light. She didn't have to think about it. Not until she wanted to. Not until she was ready.
She took a can of dog food off the shelf and stuck it under the arm of the opener without looking at the label. Toby would be hungry enough to eat whatever she put in front of him. She dumped its contents into his bowl and turned to pitch the can into the trash. Sitting on the counter beside the sink was a glass.
Maybe Dan had remembered to lock the door, but in some ways nothing had changed. Tonight that was almost comforting.
When she'd disposed of the can, from force of habit she walked over to the sink and turned on the hot water. She rinsed the glass out before she set it down beside her mug and bowl.
Behind her, she could hear Toby snuffling around hungrily in his dish. Whatever it was she'd given him tonight apparently met with his approval.
She took a deep breath, releasing more of her tension with the slow exhalation. The blinking light was not necessarily anything bad, she told herself again. Not necessarily a repetition of last night's message.
Don't borrow trouble. Louise had said that to her over and over again during her marriage. At least she had before Danny died.
Tiredly Sarah lifted both arms and used her fingers to comb her hair away from her face. The smell of grease from the restaurant's kitchen, which always permeated the fabric of her cuffs, made her slightly nauseated.
She'd feel better if she got out of these clothes and took a bath. Maybe feel more like eating, although right now she couldn't think of anything that seemed the least bit appetizing.
Toby was pushing his bowl across the floor as he tried to get at the last of the gravy. The dish made a series of bump and scrape noises against the tile. Familiar. Known. Dear.
Her lips curved at the memory of the big lummox chasing that silly ball. He had played like an overgrown puppy.
Just feeding him every night wasn't really taking care of him. He needed exercise. Companionship. Dan was even better at that than she was.
Of course, Toby had always had a preference for masculine company. He'd trailed after Dan or Danny wherever they went. He had tolerated her, yet ironically, she was the one who had ended up with him.
To try to hold on to some part of Danny?
Whatever her reasons for taking the dog. he was now her responsibility. And she needed to do better by him. It was an obligation. A duty. She was the one who was supposed to be so damn good at those.
She put her hands on the edge of the counter, pushing away from it in order to head to the bathroom. Toby lifted his head as if he might follow her.
He wasn't totally sure, however, that he'd removed every particle of food from his dish. Before she left the kitchen, he was back at it. The sound of that bump and scrape followed her across the living room, where she again ignored the light on the answering machine.
Mac Donovan glanced at the address he'd jotted on the back of an envelope. He'd had Sonny read it to him over the phone off the complaint form Mrs. Patterson had filled out last night. With the information, his partner had included an unsolicited warning that Morel wasn't going to like Mac butting into the case.
As if this isn't my case, Mac thought, his resentment of what Morel had done boiling up again as he pulled his car up to the curb.
His eyes examined the dilapidated building whose numbers matched those he'd been given. It didn't fit with the impression he'd formed of Sarah Patterson.
Of course, he'd just met her, under circumstances no one could consider social. And his opinion had been influenced by his admiration of what she had tried to do, misguided or not. As one of the cops who had spent the last couple of years trying to catch Tate, he wasn't exactly unbiased. Still...
The place where she lived had been a private dwelling at one time. If it had followed the normal route most of these big Victorian houses had taken, it had gradually been carved up into apartments, each generation of them growing smaller and less attractive than the previous one.
That happened a lot in New Orleans, especially in neighborhoods like this. Not historic enough to attract preservation money or civic interest, the houses were simply allowed to slowly deteriorate.
He laid the envelope on the dash and opened the door on a post-twilight darkness. Someone had shot out the street lamp, but the lights on either side of the building's entryway, encased in mesh cages, survived. And there were lights on inside both of the ground-floor apartments.
As he studied the sagging porch over the front door, the curtain that obscured the window of the street-level apartment on his right was pushed aside. A child's face, ghostly white in the dimness, was pressed against the dark glass.
As he got out of the car, the kid waved. Mac glanced at the street behind him to see if that greeting had been intended for someone else.
There was no one there, so he lifted his hand and self-consciously twisted his wrist a couple of times. The kid's wave became more vigorous.
Not the usual reception a representative of the N.O.P.D. could expect clown here, he thought cynically. Turning back to the car, he pressed the auto-lock and then slammed the door, taking the beat cop's habitual survey of his surroundings as he did.
It was too cold for the inhabitants of the neighboring houses to be out on their porches and stoops as they probably would have been at any other time of the year. Tonight, they were all inside, trying to stay warm.
When he finally turned back to face the house, the child at the window had disappeared, probably called away to do homework or eat supper. As if in reaction to the thought. Mac's stomach growled.
Since he had eaten a late lunch, this was more likely a protest over the heaviness of that meal rather than anticipation of supper. He wondered if Sarah Patterson had already eaten dinner. A little surprised that he would even think to question that, he pushed the idea to the back of his mind and started up the sidewalk.
According to the address on the form, she lived in 3B. He considered the house again, counting stories. Unless the roofline hid an attic apartment, she was at the top. In the cheap seats.
Sonny had said she was a waitress. In this town that could mean very good money. Of course, you had to work your way up to the older, more established places that attracted the heavy tippers. Since she'd been divorced less than a year, maybe Sarah hadn't had time to do that. Or maybe she was just crummy at the job. She didn't seem to have the personality required for that perky servitude.
And how the hell would you know that? he wondered as he followed the sidewalk up to the entry.
He stopped to study the array of buzzers. Half of them were unmarked, bearing neither a name nor a number. Since the door was propped open with a narrow wedge of wood, designed to prevent the lock from engaging, he supposed it didn't matter if the residents were unidentified.
/> So much for security.
He pushed the door open, wondering how many customers he would lock out if he kicked the wedge out of the way. But that was none of his business. At least not right now.
Of course, neither was the woman on the third floor, but Mac didn't let that realization stop him from entering the building, letting the front door close against the block of wood.
The hall that led to the bedroom was dark, but Sarah didn't bother with the light. She walked into the bathroom, flipping on the one over the lavatory. As she began unbuttoning her vest, she closed her eyes, rolling her neck from side to side to work out the stiffness.
When she opened them, her gaze fell on the toilet. The seat was up, and when she saw it, an unwanted nostalgia crowded her throat.
That was another of the endless things she had nagged them about. All those nights when she'd stumbled into the bathroom in the dark, trying not to wake anyone, and had sat down on the cold rim of the John.
Just assume it's going to be up, Dan had said. There's more of us than there are of you.
There always had been. A masculine conspiracy.
She stepped across the narrow bathroom and, bending down, turned on the water to begin filling the claw-footed tub. Although there were rust stains from spigot to drain, the tub had been one of the selling points of the apartment. She had had to look pretty hard to find something charming about the place, but this big, old-fashioned bathtub had definitely qualified.
She heard Toby click down the hall as she walked over to the clothes hamper to drop her vest inside. He was heading back to the bedroom to take a nap on her bed. He'd finally learned that when the bathroom door was closed, the room was off limits.
Danny, on the other hand, had never understood why she would ever need to be alone, for any reason. She realized with a small jolt that she was smiling at the memory.
Just as she had smiled as she'd watched the dog and the boy play in the park this afternoon. Dwight ran with a gait that was almost girlish, as if he hadn't done much running, but that wasn't why she had smiled. It had been because of their pure, unadulterated joy in what they were doing.
She couldn't remember the last time she had felt like that. Maybe you had to be a child to feel it, and God knew there was nothing childlike left within her.
There was a noise in the hall, drawing her eyes to the closed door. She waited, listening for the sound to be repeated so she could identify it. When it was, she realized Toby was out there, sniffing along the bottom of the door.
Trying to get in? He hadn't done that in a long time.
The clog whined a couple of times, and then he barked, the tone sharp and demanding.
"Go take a nap," she said, as if he could understand the instruction.
When she began to turn back toward the tub, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror above the lavatory. The effects of a sleepless night followed by the long day were evident in her face. Her eyes were rimmed with red, the shadows under them pronounced.
She had begun to turn away from that depressing image when she noticed a smear on the shower curtain behind her, which was also reflected in the mirror. She completed the motion, her eyes searching for whatever she had seen in the glass. She found it, high on the edge, as if someone with dirty hands had pushed the curtain back to reveal the tub.
Dan? she wondered, taking a step to the side in order to examine the spot more carefully.
The smear wasn't dirt. Dan must have cut his finger and then come in here to find a Band-Aid or to wash the cut out with soap and water.
In the bathtub rather than at the lavatory?
Her gaze dropped to the water filling the tub. Surely when she'd bent down to turn the handles, she would have noticed if there had been droplets of blood on the white porcelain.
Toby barked again, still demanding, and then he began pawing at the door, his nails moving rapidly against the wood as if he were digging a hole. Still puzzling over the stain on the curtain, she strode over to the door and jerked it open. The dog was shocked enough by the abruptness of its movement to back up a step or two, his eyes red in the darkness.
"What the hell's the matter with you?" With her first word, he pushed by her, barreling into the bathroom.
"Oh, no, you don't." She tried to block his entrance with her knee, but it didn't work. He skidded across the ceramic tile, taking refuge behind the toilet.
As far away from her as he could get. As if he thought she was going to beat him or something. Her mouth opened to yell at him, but no sound came out.
The dog had left behind him a trail of paw prints on the white tile. Their edges were blurred and indistinct, softened by the thick fur around his pads, but there was no doubt about the medium with which they had been imprinted. The only way the damn dog could have gotten that much blood on his feet...
Then, her breath slowly congealing to ice in her chest, Sarah turned, looking out into the dark hallway.
Eight
As Mac stepped into the foyer, the accumulated smells of age and mildew were thick. An unpleasant contrast to the winter-tinged crispness of the outside air.
He stood in the fetid dimness a moment, getting a feel for the building. Somewhere, a baby cried faintly in long, sirenlike wails. A television blared unintelligibly from the apartment to his left. There was no sound at all from the one to the right, where he'd seen the kid.
His eyes tracked up the staircase that centered the hall. Its banisters had been intricately tooled from what appeared to be mahogany. A few of the individual balusters were missing, but it still managed to echo the elegance of the era during which the house had been built. Judging by the grime that virtually obscured the swirling arabesques of its pattern, the carpet that covered the tread probably dated from that period as well.
Third floor. He started up the stairs, realizing as he approached the second story that this was where the baby lived.
Its hysteria seemed to be increasing. Surely somebody would shove a pacifier or a bottle into its mouth pretty soon. The noise was beginning to grate, and he'd only been here a couple of minutes.
As he continued to climb, he became conscious of the heat that increased with each step. The baby was whooping now, with no pauses between the shrieks, so that he wondered where the kid was getting the air necessary to fuel the sound.
As he climbed up the final flight, both the temperature and the discomfort increased, but at least the noise from the lower levels faded away. In contrast to the clamor below, the third floor seemed deserted. No sounds of televisions or radios. No signs of life.
Wild goose chase? he wondered, verifying that the door of 3B was to the right of the top of the stairs, separated from them by a narrow hallway. The heat here was stifling, although the window at the end of the hall had been left open, its sash raised a few inches.
He resisted the urge to take off his sports coat. After all these years on the job. he felt naked if he didn't slip on the shoulder holster as he dressed in the morning. From force of habit he'd done that today.
He walked over to the door of Sarah's apartment. Instead of knocking, he listened, his ear pressed against the wood. No sounds emanated from inside. Either she was an exceptionally quiet tenant, especially for this place, or she wasn't home.
After climbing three flights of stairs, he sure as hell wasn't going away without trying. He pushed the bell, listening to it chime somewhere distantly inside. Then he again leaned forward, putting his ear against the door.
Almost immediately he heard footsteps. As they approached, more rapidly than he'd expected, he stepped back, positioning himself cooperatively in front of the peephole.
When she saw who it was. Danny Patterson's mother might not be willing to open the door. Mac knew that was a chance he'd have to take. With the message she'd gotten last night, she certainly wasn't going to open her door if she didn't have a clear view of whoever was out here.
The footsteps stopped, and he assumed she was looking throu
gh the peephole. After a few seconds, he lifted his hand to knock. Before he could bring it down, he heard the distinctive snick of a dead bolt being turned. His fist, poised to strike, hesitated in midair.
When the door swung inward, Sarah's face appeared in the crack. Her features were drained of blood, making her eyes unnaturally dark, wide and almost stark.
Maybe from years of seeing this same look in other victims' eyes, Mac recognized her terror even before she opened her mouth. "What's wrong?"
"There's blood on my dog."
"Your dog's hurt?"
"No. I don't think so. My ex-husband was here earlier."
Mac examined the non sequitur, still trying to figure out what the hell was going on to make her look like this. "You think your ex-husband hurt your dog?"
"Not the dog," she said. "It's not the dog that's hurt. I was going to go back there, back to the bedroom, to see what was going on, and then...you rang the bell."
"You think your ex-husband is hurt?" Mac was beginning to put the bits and pieces of her disjointed narrative together.
"I don't know." Her eyes seemed more rational now. Almost focused. "When I saw the blood, I thought—""
"What did you think, Mrs. Patterson?"
She shook her head again, not so much in denial of what he'd asked, as of what she had been thinking. "Would you come back there with me, please? When I saw the blood, I panicked. Because of that message last night. But...Dan may be hurt. If you could just go with me into the bedroom—"
By that time. Mac had figured most of it out. After last night's message, when she'd seen blood in her apartment, she'd jumped to the conclusion that the two things might be connected.
Given the kind of creature Samuel Tate was, Mac couldn't blame her for panicking a little. Not even if there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for what was going on.
Mac reached inside his coat and slipped his .38 out of its holster. The weight of the weapon settled into his hand with a familiarity that was comforting. "Stay here."
