Immediately, his phone went silent. Call Ended, the screen message said.
Thirty-Seven
He stuffed the phone back into his pocket, moved two steps closer to Danni’s door, and waited. She was either sitting there on her bed, feeling the panic mount, unsure of what to do next, or she was stuffing clothes into a bag. Maybe she was whispering urgently to Thomas Huston. Maybe she was calling him, asking what she should do.
DeMarco thought he heard movement inside. No heavy footsteps, no mad rushing about, but soft, quick steps, the clink of what might have been keys. He was aware then of a quickening of his pulse, that familiar excitement of the chase. But as soon as he recognized the heat of the adrenaline rush coming, he suppressed it, smothered the flame. This wasn’t some gooned-up punk he would have to throw against a wall and cuff; this was a frightened young woman, a girl he had yanked up out of her sleep with just the mention of a name. And the plaintiveness in her voice when she had said, Thomas? Is that you?—the memory of that voice brought a sudden heaviness to his chest, an ache that extinguished all traces of excitement.
The door opened quickly, startling him. She stepped out onto the balcony, saw him, and gasped audibly.
He smiled.
She looked away. Turned back to the door, pulled the door shut, nervously fitted her key in the lock. “I’m sorry. I have to get to work. I can’t talk right now.”
“Whispers doesn’t open for a while yet, Danni. A long while.”
She took a breath. Still facing the door she turned her head slightly, lifted her eyes to him. “I mean class. I have to get to class.”
She was dressed in yellow basketball shorts, a gray hoodie, low-cut Nike running shoes, no socks. She had probably rolled out of bed after his phone call, pulled on the shoes and hoodie, yanked her long brown hair into a ponytail. DeMarco imagined her jogging toward him through the mist as he sat alone on a park bench.
Softly he told her, “I’m not here to arrest you, Danni. Not if you’re honest with me.”
“I don’t…” She glanced down at the dirty blacktop of the parking lot. Green eyes wet with tears. “I don’t know anything.”
“Is Thomas Huston inside your apartment, Danni?”
“No! No, why? He’s never been in my apartment.”
“Then why don’t you and I just go inside and sit down and have a conversation, okay? That’s all it will be.”
Now she began to tremble. Tears streaked both cheeks. Her voice quivered when she spoke. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“I know you haven’t.” He moved closer now, stood next to her, spoke very softly. “I know you wouldn’t. I just need to talk to you, that’s all. Five minutes and I’m gone.”
She sniffed back her tears, blinked twice. Then faced the door and again raised her key to the lock.
DeMarco watched as she fumbled to open the door. She looked barely into her twenties, five and a half feet tall, maybe a hundred fifteen pounds. A tiny thing, really. A child. His chest began to ache again, a heaviness of breath. His left eye watered.
“I’m going to move my car out of the driveway,” he told her. “I’ll be right back.” And he turned away quickly, quickly brushed the wet sting from the corner of his eye.
• • •
Underfurnished living room, tiny kitchen, a bathroom the size of a closet, a bedroom behind a curtained doorway. Furnishings were minimal, a futon for a sofa, two collapsible chairs, one green, one yellow, $12.95 each at Walmart. He guessed that she slept on a secondhand mattress on the floor in the bedroom, no dresser or chest of drawers, that she kept her clothes neatly folded in cardboard boxes lined against the wall. But everything was neat, no dust, no dirty dishes in the sink. The air smelled vaguely of strawberries. An unlit candle on the kitchen counter.
She sat on the futon, feet drawn up beneath her. He stood by the window, over which she had hung a vinyl blind and a sheer, cream-colored lace curtain.
“When was the last time you saw or heard from Thomas Huston?” he asked.
She chewed on her lower lip. Then said, “I guess it was a week ago this Thursday. Last Thursday night.”
“And where did this occur?”
“At Whispers.”
“Did you spend time with him there?”
“A little.”
“A private couch dance?”
“That’s what he paid for but…”
“But what?”
“That’s not what we did. We never did that.”
“Then what did you do?”
“Just talked.”
“In the room where the couch dances are held. You talked.”
“That’s all we ever did, I swear.”
“Okay. And what did you talk about?”
“He was writing a book about a dancer. So he would ask me stuff.”
“What kind of stuff, Danni?”
“Stuff a writer would want to know, I guess. Like how did it feel when I was up on the stage or in the champagne room with a guy. What I thought about when they were watching me. What I thought about when I went home.”
DeMarco nodded. “That’s only three questions though. And he visited Whispers five, six times, am I right?”
“After the first time it really wasn’t like an interview, you know? I mean…we just talked. He was a nice guy, he was very sweet.”
“Are you telling me that there was no physical involvement between the two of you in the champagne room?”
“There wasn’t. I swear. I sat beside him on the love seat. We just talked. That’s all we ever did.”
“And you never saw him outside of Whispers?”
“Just that first time.”
“Tell me about that first time, Danni.”
“I was jogging one morning. I like to jog early when there’s nobody else around.”
“And this was in Erie?”
“No, it was here.”
“I didn’t see a park here in town.”
“There’s the Borough Park, but that’s not where I was. It was on the bike path. It runs alongside the railroad tracks and across the extension canal. All the way into Shadytown.”
“And Shadytown is where?”
“About three miles south of here.”
“And where along this bike path did you meet Thomas Huston?”
“Shadytown is just a tiny, little village. I don’t think it even has a post office. But just off Route 18, there’s this little place beside the canal. I don’t even know if it has a name. It’s just a couple of picnic tables and barbecue grills, but the bike path runs through it for another hundred yards or so. Then it just ends.”
“So you run in one direction, then you turn around and run back.”
She nodded, chewed on her lip, sat with her hands shoved underneath her thighs.
“And Thomas was where along this path?”
“In the park. At the first picnic table.”
“And you came jogging along and…”
“Most of the way, there’s either the railroad tracks or the canal on the one side of the path. On the right side going to Shadytown, on the left coming back.”
“And on the other side there’s what? Route 18?”
“Yeah, but you can’t see it from the path. There’s always trees or heavy brush on that side. Except for the traffic noise, you’d never even know it’s there.”
“And you feel safe running there in the early morning?”
“I carry pepper spray and a whistle.”
DeMarco smiled. Christ, he thought.
She said, “So anyway, just as the bike path enters the little picnic area, that side opens up into a big clearing with the tables and stuff. The first table is like right beside where the brush ends. In fact, when you’re on the path, you can’t even see the table until you’re right beside i
t, and it’s like maybe three feet from the edge of the path.”
“And that’s where Thomas was sitting.”
“It was so startling, you know. I’ve never seen anybody there in the morning. Then suddenly there’s this guy.”
“So what happened?”
“He scared me. ’Cause he was like… He told me he had heard my footsteps coming. He could hear me breathing, you know? So he was sitting there sort of leaning forward, trying to see around the edge of the brush. But it’s sort of misty, the way it always is in the morning, especially if it’s rained the night before. And I’m on top of him before either one of us knows it. I almost ran into his head.”
She was smiling now, staring at the floor. DeMarco waited.
She said, “He jerked out of the way just in time, and I guess maybe I screamed a little bit, more of a loud gasp, you know? Anyway, I tripped over my own feet and almost ended up in the canal.”
“Then what?”
“He got up to help me. But by then I had my pepper spray out.” Her smiled widened. “He was so funny. He put both hands in the air and sat back down and said, ‘I’m not moving. I’m staying right here. Just tell me if you’re okay.’”
“And were you?”
“Except that I’d twisted my ankle.”
“So how did you get back home?”
“We just stayed like that for maybe fifteen minutes, him on the picnic table, me with my pepper spray out. He told me his name, where he taught, the names of his kids and his wife… He even tossed me his wallet so I could look at the pictures and his ID. So finally…I said okay. I let him drive me back home.”
“And that was it?”
She shook her head. “I knew who he was by then. I knew he was a famous writer. I told him about reading his second novel in lit class.”
“State university?” DeMarco asked.
She nodded. “I’m a senior. Elementary Education major.”
“And so…”
“There was just something…so easy about him, you know? I mean he actually seemed interested in me, this famous, big-shot writer. It was flattering. So when I asked him what he was working on now, and he told me…”
“You told him about Whispers.”
“On the way back to my place, he stopped at a convenience store and got us each a cappuccino. Then we just sat in his car outside my apartment for a while and talked. And yeah, I told him about Whispers.”
“And you became his Annabel.”
“He never actually said that. I mean, he did spend more time with me there than with the other girls, but he never said I was the one he was writing about. Anyway it was fiction, wasn’t it?”
“You’re the only girl he paid for private dances with?”
“As far as I know.”
“So maybe that part wasn’t just for talking?”
She looked up at him. “He told me I reminded him of his wife when she was my age. Except that her hair is darker than mine.”
“That doesn’t answer my question though, does it?”
“He never touched me. Not like that. He never once even tried.”
DeMarco considered asking what would have happened if Huston had tried to touch her. Then he decided that the answer was irrelevant.
“And after that first meeting in the park, he came to Whispers every Thursday night. You spent twenty minutes with him in the champagne room, and you had a conversation.”
“That’s it,” she said. “That’s all of it.” A few moments passed before she added, “Except that it wasn’t every Thursday night after that. He missed one.”
“Do you remember which one?”
She gave it some thought. “It would have been the time before the last time he was there.”
“Did you ask him about it?”
“He said he had to go out of town on business.”
DeMarco tried to think of something else he might ask. “Anything else you can tell me about your relationship with him?”
She thought for a few moments. “I gave him my phone number.”
“You did? When was that?”
“The last time he came to Whispers. I mean, it didn’t make any sense to me that he had to pay a cover charge and all just to talk to me. So I told him that. And I gave him my number. He promised to thank me in his new book. He said he’d like me to meet his wife sometime.”
With the final sentence, tears pooled in her eyes. DeMarco said, “Did he give you his number?”
She nodded. “He said that if I ever needed anything, just to let him know.”
“And did he ever call you? Or you call him?”
“Neither,” she said.
DeMarco watched her for a few moments. She was sitting with her head down, picking tears from the corners of her eyes.
And he asked himself, Was it just his kindness? Is that why she’s crying? And was his kindness real?
He had no answers. Finally he said, “So why did you run from me, Danni?”
“I don’t know. You’re a policeman. Thomas’s family has all been killed and he’s missing. I spent time with him at the club… I was scared, I guess.”
He studied her for a moment. “So you’re a senior this year?”
“I do my student teaching in the spring. Then I’m done. Graduate, get a job, maybe have a normal life for a change.”
“You have a boyfriend?”
“There’s a guy I’m seeing.”
“Does he know you dance?”
“He lives in Pittsburgh. I only see him when I go down there.”
“How about your parents? Do they know?”
She did not move. Only her shoulders quivered. He saw one small dark spot appear on the edge of the sofa cushion, then another.
He crossed toward her, laid a hand on the top of her head. He said, “I might have to call you again, Danni, if I think of anything else to ask. Be safe when you run, okay? I know that mornings are nice but…be safe.”
Thirty-Eight
Back at the barracks, he dropped the white paper bag, long and slender, on Commander Bowen’s desk. “You want half of this?” Bowen asked.
“I want six dollars and forty-nine cents.”
Bowen reached for his wallet. “Learn anything useful?”
“At the moment I’d say no. But I have to process it to be sure. Something feels off.”
“You locate the contact?” He laid a five and two ones on the far edge of the table.
DeMarco picked up the bills, folded them, and slipped them into his pocket. “I found her, but there were no revelations. She’s just a kid. Decent kid at that.”
Bowen unwrapped the spinach roll, a long tube of baked pizza dough stuffed with spinach, mushrooms, and gooey mozzarella. “You sure you don’t want some of this?”
“Nah, I’m not hungry. I already licked it a few times on the way back.”
Bowen grinned, lifted the spinach roll to his mouth, and bit off the end. “She wasn’t getting it on with the suspect?”
“Says no. I’m inclined to believe her.”
“And why is that?”
“Can we have this conversation when there’s not cheese and spinach hanging out of your mouth?”
“I want you to know that I still have my concerns.”
“Hemorrhoid cream, liberally applied. Works every time.”
“All I’m saying is you knew the guy. Maybe it colors your judgment, maybe it doesn’t.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t get hemorrhoids if you didn’t sit around on your flat ass all day.”
Bowen waved him away. “Go. I’d rather be alone with this beauty anyway. I’m in heaven here.”
In his own office, DeMarco sat at his desk and stared at the screen saver on his monitor, a black background with what were supposed to be stars rushing forward as if he
were speeding through deep space. To DeMarco it looked more like a snowstorm at night, the Arctic Express blasting toward him off Lake Erie.
He asked himself why he felt so tense. Ever since leaving Albion, his nerves had felt raw and abraded. Something sat leering at him from the edge of his consciousness, something he could not quite identify—something he should know, almost knew, but couldn’t quite put his finger on.
He reached for a legal pad, turned to a clean sheet, laid the tablet horizontal. Across the top he wrote three names, evenly spaced: Danni. Bonnie. Huston.
Under Danni’s name he wrote a.k.a. Annabel. And under that, I believe her.
Under Bonnie’s name he wrote don’t trust her.
And under Huston’s name why Shadytown at dawn? missed one Thursday at Whispers why? told Danni out of town on business. Bonnie failed to mention the missing night.
But Bonnie hadn’t failed to mention Danni. She could have given him the names of any two dancers. Instead, one of them just happened to be Huston’s connection. Why had Bonnie done that? She could have protected Danni, provided another’s name. Was it a gift? Or was it a diversion?
He stared at the paper. There was more to the situation than what he had written, he knew there was. But what was he missing? His brain wasn’t working right, wasn’t seeing the connections. He got out his cell phone, called Danni’s number. This time he didn’t bother to block his own.
“Two questions,” he said after her hello. “Who’s the bouncer at the club?”
“You mean Tex?” she said.
“Kind of scrawny, mouthful of crooked teeth. Collects the money at the entrance.”
“That’s Moby,” she said.
“So who’s Tex?”
“He’s kind of big? Not tall but beefy, you know? Shaved head, looks like a butcher?”
“There wasn’t anybody like that around when I was there.”
“You might not have seen him, I guess. He spends most of his time upstairs, watching everything through the one-way glass.”
“You know his last name? Where he lives maybe?”
“No, but Bonnie would. I’m pretty sure there’s something going on between them.”
“Why do you say that?”
Two Days Gone Page 17
