Nightlife: A Novel

by Thomas Perry

  When Charlene was little and first went on the pageant circuit, Charlene’s cuteness drew attention to Sharon. She got to be the pretty young mother of the pretty little girl. But when Charlene was in junior high school, the situation changed. Now the girls in the pageant were thirteen to seventeen. Charlene won Miss Junior Hogan County and Miss Junior Carroway County, both on false addresses, and finally Miss Junior Central Illinois. But her mother’s pleasure wore out.

  They were both ten years older by then, and the years looked better on Charlene than on Sharon. She was the one who got the attention; she was Sharon’s competition, her enemy. Her mother began to make disparaging remarks about Charlene’s weight, her hair, her complexion, her performances. She began to mock the answers Charlene gave to the emcee’s questions. Charlene knew they were good, because there were only about twenty-five questions that all emcees always asked, and she had memorized the best answers of the winners over the years.

  Charlene had to drop out of the pageants at the age of fifteen because her mother refused to enter her anymore. She was glad that she would no longer be forced into hours of close proximity to her mother, but it made her feel more vulnerable to the horrible girls at school. She no longer had the secret life where she got to wear fancy formal dresses—and, most of the time, a crown. When that world was gone, she had nothing.

  The girls at school had always been cold and unfriendly, but beginning in junior high they were actively cruel. Anytime she talked to a girl she was told she was obnoxious and pushy. When she talked to a boy she was a whore. When she didn’t talk she was a stuck-up bitch. When she did well on a test she was showing off and sucking up to the teachers. She ate lunch alone, walked from class to class alone.

  As she thought about it today, she decided that if she had the leisure sometime, she would take a drive up to Illinois and see if she could find a few of those girls. By now Gail Halpren would be married and have a couple of kids. Judith would walk up to the house and knock on the door. It would open. She would say, “Remember me? I used to be Charlene Buckner. I thought you deserved to be thanked for the way you treated me in high school.” Then she would pull out the gun. Or she would find Terry Nugent. Terry would probably be in Chicago, working as a lawyer or a stockbroker. She would wait for her in a parking garage. “Aren’t you Terry Nugent, from Wheatfield? Yes, it’s me. But let’s not talk about those days now. We can talk about them forever in hell.” Pow.

  After she moved in with Carl, the other women were the wives and girlfriends of important men. None of them had liked her, but now the reasons were clearer. The parties in that social set had been beauty pageants too—women parading stiffly around with fake immovable smiles and wide, scared eyes. She had been more convincing at it than they were, and so they’d hated her.

  Now the police were hunting for her, and the one who was causing it was another woman. She hated Catherine Hobbes, but she knew that part of her hatred was just outrage at the unevenness of the competition. Catherine Hobbes had the right look, very erect and tailored. She had a cool, imperturbable demeanor that made her seem wise and knowing. And behind her was all that power.

  Judith got up from the bed, looked out the window at the clear day, went into the bathroom to shower, then came out and dressed. She wore a smart skirt and sweater as though she were going to work in an office somewhere, but she put Tyler Gilman’s old baseball cap and his jacket into her backpack and took them with her to the car.

  She wished she knew whether the police had found Greg by now. She supposed she could find out if they had by driving past his apartment and looking for their cars, but she didn’t want to go there. She didn’t know whether the police believed that old adage about killers returning to the scene of the crime. If they believed it, they would be watching for her.

  She drove north and east across the Broadway Bridge, toward the police bureau on North Thompson Street. She found a parking space for her Acura on North Tillamook and walked around the block. As she approached the building, she tried to take in everything about it. She saw a number of cars, some of them police cars, coming and going from the lot beside the building. It was a busy place, and she was not the only pedestrian. She had noticed other times that the people who came and went from police stations always looked hurried and preoccupied, never happy. This afternoon, none of them seemed to have much curiosity about anyone else.

  Long before she reached the building, she saw what she had been looking for: beneath the building was an entrance ramp. She guessed that there must be some kind of underground garage where the police parked their personal cars. She walked past the entrance, looked inside, and made a decision.

  She followed the ramp down into the lower level. The cars here had to be the ones that belonged to the cops, but as soon as she was there, she began to lose hope of figuring anything out. There were so many cars, and she’d begun with only a theory about Catherine Hobbes to help her.

  She had believed that Catherine Hobbes was so sure of herself and of her tastes that she would have replaced the car she had lost in the fire with one exactly like it: the car would be a new teal blue Acura, paid for by her fire insurance.

  Judith walked purposefully between two rows of cars, looking hard at them, but she saw no Acura, and no teal blue cars of any brand. She reminded herself that it was always possible that Catherine wasn’t at work today, or that she had parked on some nearby street as Judith had, or that she was out right now using her own car instead of a police car. All of those things were possible, but possible wasn’t the same as likely.

  Judith kept looking, walked to the end of the aisle, then turned up the next aisle and headed back. She sensed that she had spent all the time she could down here. She heard a sound, and looked up to see a male driver in a Ford Explorer come down the ramp and turn into an empty space. He was obviously a cop—short-haired and beefy with a mustache—and he was in a hurry. He stepped down from the driver’s seat, reached back into the vehicle to take out a hard-sided briefcase and a jacket, and looked at Judith.

  “Can I help you find something?” He was like all cops. He was trying not to look suspicious, and he had no reason to be suspicious, but he couldn’t help it. She could tell, however, that he had the wrong crime in mind. He didn’t recognize her. Maybe he would recognize her later, when she was long gone.

  She said, “This is the police station, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is. But you can’t park down here. You have to go up to the ground level and come in that way. There’s visitor parking up there.”

  “Thanks. I parked on the street,” she said. She kept walking, her heart beginning to beat hard only after the danger was over. She was nearly to the ramp before she realized that she might have seen the car while he was talking. There was a gray Dodge Neon with a license-plate holder from Enterprise Rent-a-Car on it. Catherine might not have replaced her car yet. She might still be driving a rental. Judith knew she couldn’t go back and look at it more closely. She came up out of the parking area and headed for the front door of the station, then at the last moment went past it and walked quickly up the street.

  She reached her car and drove off. She came back to North Thompson Street at five and parked where she could watch the driveway from a distance. She saw a steady stream of cars come out just after six, but Catherine’s car was not among them. Judith judged that the shift had probably changed, but Catherine was Detective Sergeant Hobbes. She didn’t have to keep the same hours as the traffic cops. She saw another group go at eight, and a third at ten, but she didn’t see the small gray Dodge Neon.

  She conceded that she could have guessed wrong. Maybe the rental car wasn’t Catherine’s. Some other cop could have his car in the shop for repairs and be driving the rental until it was ready. She might be wasting her evening. She was getting bored and hungry, and she needed to use a restroom. She started her car and angled the wheels away from the curb. As she prepared to move up the street, away from the police bureau, she glanced in
the mirror to be sure the street was clear. The Dodge Neon was moving up the ramp and turning toward her.

  Judith waited and let the Neon go by. She could see that the driver was a woman, and the woman seemed to have the right kind of hair, but the face was in darkness. Judith gave the Neon a head start, then pulled out after it. She followed at a distance, waiting for a few seconds before she made the right turn to follow it onto North Tillamook, then waited until two other cars had gone by before she made the second right up North Interstate Avenue.

  Judith followed as the car made another right turn onto Northeast Russell Street. She managed to keep one of the two cars between her car and the Neon as they drove past the big hospital on the left side of Northeast Russell. Then the Neon signaled for a left turn. Judith went past on the right slowly, studying the driver, and saw that it was Catherine Hobbes. Judith went down the street for a block, and watched the car in the mirror as it turned into the driveway beside a modern brick apartment building.

  As soon as the car was out of sight behind the building, Judith turned around, came back, and parked where she could watch the windows. But as she watched, Judith saw two women in scrubs walking from the direction of the hospital turn up the sidewalk toward the front steps. One of the women was fishing in her purse. She pulled out a set of keys. But before she could use them, a young man in a similar hospital uniform appeared in the lobby, came out, and held the door while they went in, then released it and headed for the hospital.

  Judith saw Catherine come up from a set of stairs into the lighted hallway, apparently having come in from the back of the building. She walked past the elevator and stepped into the stairwell.

  Judith got out of her car and walked closer, watching the side of the apartment building. After a few moments the lights in a row of third-floor windows came on.

  54

  The next evening, Catherine drove up Adair Hill and parked her rental car across the street from her parents’ house. She walked up the porch steps and tried the knob. It was locked. She had been hoping it would be, but she couldn’t help feeling a cold, sad sensation as she took out her key and opened the door.

  “Hello?” she called. “Anybody home?”

  “Where would we be?” It was her father. He came around the corner from the kitchen and let her kiss him on the cheek.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “You’re old enough to make your own decisions, and to live with the consequences.”

  “Thank you, dear,” her mother called from the kitchen. “Nice of you to come by. Did they close the police bureau and kick you out?”

  “No, I left voluntarily.” She came into the kitchen, followed by her father. She kissed her mother, once again surprised by the incredible softness that her mother’s cheek had developed in the past few years, and savoring the faint scent of gardenia soap she had smelled since childhood.

  Catherine sat at the kitchen table and accepted the cup of coffee her father set in front of her. He sat down with a glass of water and eyed her as he would a suspect. “Hard day, kid?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know anymore. Since we found that guy yesterday and Tanya’s fingerprint in his shower, nothing much else has turned up. Maybe that’s good. We’re not up to our armpits in new bodies. But it doesn’t feel like we’re winning.”

  “It never does until it’s over,” said her father. “I was betting she would be recognized by now, though.”

  Catherine’s mother seemed to be more and more agitated as her husband and daughter talked. She said, “How about your life outside of work? Anything interesting happening?”

  “Not that I’ve noticed. I seem to be the same bitter divorcée I’ve been for years.”

  “We haven’t seen you much. Has Joe Pitt been around?”

  Catherine’s father seemed to remember something else he had to do. He took his glass of water with him to another room.

  “A couple of weeks ago. He’s back in Los Angeles doing his own cases. We call each other a lot.”

  “What do you talk about?”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I think I mean, are you serious about him?”

  “Or is he serious about me.”

  “Both ways.”

  “Headline: Mother Wants Daughter to Settle Down.”

  “Or not,” said Martha Hobbes. “Maybe you’re getting too settled as it is. Is being a cop all you ever want to do?”

  “Is that such an odd idea?”

  “It’s a big joke on me, I can tell you. I spent twenty-five years waiting for your father to get to retirement age without any holes in him. And now I worry about you. Marriage might not be so bad compared to having murderers burning your house down around your ears.”

  “I was married, remember? That’s how I realized I should be a detective. I detected that my husband was screwing everybody he could reach.”

  Her mother stared at her. “Is that funny to you?”

  “Funnier than it used to be,” said Catherine. “Believe me, I’ve come a long way toward your way of thinking in the past few weeks.”

  “You mean you really are serious about him?”

  “Yes, I’m very serious. But I’m not making plans for any weddings. I wasn’t going to go out with him at all until I purposely forgot everything my mother had told me about men.”

  “He lives in Los Angeles, doesn’t he? What would you do if he asked you to move there?”

  “He hasn’t.”

  “That doesn’t mean you have to put off thinking about it until he does.”

  “I don’t get it. Have you decided you want me to move to L.A., or that you don’t want me to?”

  “I want you to be happy.”

  “Good. I’m happy.”

  “I mean really happy.”

  “Mother, make yourself happy. Make Daddy happy. I’m not in a position to be ‘really happy’ right now. I have a reasonable facsimile of a boyfriend. We’re seeing where it goes, but at the moment it’s not going anywhere. Long-distance relationships are everything they’re cracked up to be, which is horrible. We tell jokes and say ‘I miss you.’ Half the time when I talk to him I’m sure he’s watching some game on television with the sound off.”

  “There. Was that so hard?”

  “What?”

  “Telling me what I asked you in the first place.”

  Catherine closed her eyes and took two deep breaths, then opened them again. “No, I guess it wasn’t.”

  Her father came in, carrying a newspaper. “Have you tried the emergency rooms?”

  “Huh?”

  “She killed this big fellow, right? Sometimes while they’re killing somebody, they get hurt. Wood or glass chips fly, people you think are dead aren’t. She could be hurt.”

  “She’s not. This one was blindfolded, lying naked in bed. All the blood in the apartment is his.”

  “Oh,” he said. “How about parking tickets? I picked up a few suspects by seeing what cars got ticketed near the scene. There’s a description of the car and the license number on the summons.”

  “Tried it.”

  “How about security videotapes? That apartment is in a neighborhood that’s mostly commercial.”

  “Tried that too.”

  “That’s my girl.” He wandered off again.

  Catherine’s mother said quietly, “Does he ever make any sense?”

  “Always. He’s trying to think of a way to shortcut this for me.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” she muttered. “It’s hard to tell if you’re just humoring him.”

  “I’m not, but I would.”

  Her mother put a piece of cherry pie on a plate and set it in front of Catherine. Catherine cut it in half and returned half to the pan without comment. Then she ate the other half and listened to her mother talk about the past few days in the neighborhood.

  The stories were a peculiar comfort to Catherine. They calmed her and reassured her that the rhythms of the real world were intact. T
he sun dried the rain-soaked gardens, the roses bloomed, and Lydia Burns put a letter in a mailbox and accidentally dropped her car keys in with it.

  At eleven Catherine went into the living room, where her father was watching the local news. He looked up. “Have you had uniformed officers circulate her picture to the mom-and-pop stores?”

  Catherine said, “What am I missing?”

  “She’s got to buy food and toothpaste somewhere. Supermarkets are full of people standing in line staring at one another, and four or five assistant managers watching customers. Maybe instead, she shops at one of those little stores run by immigrant couples who can’t tell one young American woman from another, or are afraid to cause trouble.”

  “I’ll give it a shot. Thanks, Daddy.” She kissed his cheek.

  He said, “Are you going?”

  “Yeah. I’ve had my free slice of pie, so I guess I’ll be on my way.”

  “I drove by to check out your apartment building.”

  “And you hated it?”

  “I don’t work for Architectural Digest. I like that it has a locked door with an intercom and a lot of people around. Looks like a lot of doctors.”

  “They’re all interns,” she said. “The ones that are old enough to be keepers must all have houses.”

  “When you park in that lot behind the building, look around before you get out of your car, and then watch your back.”

  “I always do,” she said. “Good night.”

  “Good night, kid.”

  She went out and stepped onto the porch. Her eyes took in the configuration of trees and houses that were so familiar to her they were the landscape of her dreams. She could see it was all as it had been for as long as she could remember, and there was no shadow that she had not memorized. She walked toward her car slowly, looking up and down the quiet street.

  The day after Tanya had burned her house, Catherine had requested that a plain car be posted a hundred feet below here, on the curve of the road, so that an officer could get a close look at the face of anyone who drove or walked by. After a week there had been no adequate justification for keeping a car any longer. There had been no indication that Tanya had looked for Catherine’s parents, but tonight something felt wrong.