The Soul Hunter

by Melanie Wells

  I tried not to act relieved. One negative, critical person in the family is enough, and since I’d had no success in changing my personality, Cleo had to go.

  “I’m sorry, Guthrie. Really. I am.”

  “Liar. Besides, don’t be. I can’t stand pity.”

  “There’s a difference between pity and empathy,” I said.

  “Okay. Feel my pain. Someone needs to.”

  I heard him rattle ice in a glass. Guthrie was a gin man.

  “Where are you?”

  “At the club. She’s at the house picking up the last of her stuff.”

  “Don’t drive home, okay? Not if you’ve been drinking.”

  “What makes you think I’ve been drinking?”

  “Guthrie.”

  “Okay. I’ll get a ride.”

  “Promise me.”

  “Scout’s honor.”

  “You got kicked out of scouts.”

  “So did you.”

  “Not the point.”

  “Okay. I swear on my golf clubs.”

  “Better. Did she take the cats?”

  “Are you kidding? The woman’s not an idiot. We’ve had those cats for half a decade and they still can’t find the litter box.”

  I laughed. “Well, at least you won’t be by yourself. Is this just a separation? Or what?”

  I heard him order another gin and tonic. “Or what, probably.”

  I didn’t know what to say. “Tough week,” was all I could muster.

  “A little. What about you? Anything happening down there?”

  “Not much.”

  “I heard you guys got snow and ice coming.”

  “It’s already started.”

  “Sticking?”

  “Yep.”

  “You got chili stuff?”

  “Absolutely. Picked it up on the way home tonight.”

  “You make good chili.”

  I smiled. “We could play poker and listen to old records if you were here.”

  “And think up baby names.”

  “You going to be okay?”

  “I’m always okay.”

  “Call me tomorrow and check in.”

  “You’re not therapizing me, are you?”

  “No. Sistering. You’re my brother. I love you.”

  “I don’t think you’ve ever said that to me before.”

  “I’m trying to improve my personality and become a nicer person.”

  He laughed. “Don’t. I can’t handle too much change at one time.”

  We said our good-byes and hung up.

  Sometimes at the end of my day, I take inventory. Add up the good, the bad, and the ugly. Most days are at least a little more good than bad. And ugly doesn’t happen too often.

  Today had been an ugly day.

  On ugly days, I sometimes go see a sad movie and have a good cry later in the bathtub. I skipped the movie this time. I filled the tub, grateful at least for the hot water, squirted in some eucalyptus bath oil for the sinus headache I knew would follow my tears, and sank into the sadness. I cried into my bath water until I couldn’t cry anymore. For myself, for Drew Sturdivant, for Maria Chavez, for Nicholas, and now for my brother. Whose crummy marriage was coming apart around him and leaving him with a houseful of cats he didn’t like.

  And then I blew my nose, took some decongestant and some aspirin, and tucked myself in, hoping Scarlett O’Hara was right. Tomorrow had to be a better day.

  16

  It might have been, too, if my telephone hadn’t rung in the middle of the night. At 3:42 a.m.

  It was Maria Chavez.

  “He’s here,” she said, whispering.

  “Who? Who’s there?” I strained to hear her answer. “I can’t hear you, Maria. Who’s there?”

  “Gordon Pryne,” she whispered.

  “What are you calling me for? Hang up this minute and call 911!”

  “I’m looking at him right now,” she said.

  I flipped on my nightstand light and sat up. “He’s not inside the house, is he? Is he standing right there or something? Does he have a knife?”

  “He’s outside. In the driveway.”

  “What’s he doing in your driveway?”

  “Skating,” she said.

  “With skates?”

  “No. Just sliding around on the ice. Playing.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I wish.”

  “Can he see you?”

  “If he can, he’s not showing it. He’s just…skating.”

  “How did you know he was out there?”

  “Nicholas told me. He woke me up and said Daddy wanted to know if he could come outside and play.”

  “Geez.”

  “I called the police.”

  “Jackson and McKnight?”

  “911. They’re sending a squad car. But with the ice…”

  “Do you have a gun?”

  “Of course not.”

  I made a mental note to buy myself a gun tomorrow. “I’m going to call Jackson and McKnight. I’ll call you right back.”

  “No! Don’t hang up! Don’t leave me. Please.”

  “Okay. Okay. Hang on.”

  This would probably have been a good time to know how to use the handy-dandy, three-way calling feature on my expensive local telephone service. But instead, Maria had to wait while I got my cell phone and dialed Jackson. I held a phone to each ear.

  “Detective,” he said in a groggy voice.

  “It’s Dylan Foster.”

  “What’s wrong?” He was alert now.

  “Gordon Pryne is at Maria Chavez’s house. I’m on the phone with her right now.”

  “How do you know Maria Chavez?”

  “Did you hear what I just said? Gordon Pryne is at her house. In her driveway.”

  “Did she call it in?”

  “Yes, but I think it’s taking them a while to get there. I have her on the other line. What should she do?”

  “Ask her if her doors are locked.”

  “Maria,” I said, “are your doors locked?”

  “Of course. But that didn’t stop him before. He could break a window.”

  I repeated her answer to Jackson.

  “Does she have a gun?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  I heard him knocking around for something. “Address?” he said finally.

  “Maria, what’s your address?”

  I repeated her answer to Jackson.

  “What’s her number? I’ll call her directly.”

  I repeated the question to Maria.

  “No! Don’t hang up.”

  “He can just beep in, Maria.”

  “I don’t have call waiting. Please don’t hang up,” she said. “Please. I don’t want to be here by myself.”

  I repeated what she said.

  “I’ll call you back,” Jackson said, and hung up.

  “What’s he doing now?” I asked Maria.

  “Still skating.”

  “Where’s Nicholas?”

  “He’s right here. He fell asleep in my bed. I don’t think he ever woke up completely.”

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “What’s Pryne doing now?”

  “He just fell down. He’s trying to get up, but it’s very slick out there. He just fell again.”

  “That could be helpful.”

  “Here they come,” she said. “I can see the squad car at the end of the street.”

  “Lights on or off?”

  “Off.”

  “Does he see it?”

  “He just did.” She paused. “He’s crawling toward the edge of the driveway. To the grass.”

  “Do they see him? Are they there yet?”

  “He made it to the grass. He’s standing up. He’s trying to run.”

  “Which way?”

  “To the back of the house.”

  “Is your yard fenced? Is your gate locked?”

  “No. There’s no fence
.” She started to cry. “Maria, listen to me. You have to stay calm. Where are the police now?”

  “Still coming down the street. They’re going so slow.”

  “Can you see him?”

  “No. He got his footing on the grass. He’s going to the back of the house.”

  “Is your bedroom door shut?”

  “Yes.”

  “Locked?”

  “It doesn’t have a lock.”

  My cell phone rang. “Hang on, Maria.”

  “Detective?”

  “Are they there yet?” Jackson asked.

  I heard Maria scream. “He just broke a window,” she said. “I heard a window break.”

  I told Jackson what was happening.

  I heard the crackle of static as Jackson repeated my description into a radio.

  “Maria, is there a dresser or something?” I said. “Something you can push in front of the door?”

  “I can’t move,” she said.

  “Maria, push something in front of the door. Now.”

  I heard her struggling with something while I told Jackson about the window.

  “They just pulled up in front of the house,” she said. “They’re getting out of the car. Something’s coming in on their walkie-talkies. They’re talking to someone. Is that Jackson?”

  “I think so.”

  “Where is he now?” Jackson asked.

  “Maria, do you know where he is?”

  “No. I can’t see him.”

  “Do you hear anything in the house?” I asked.

  “No.”

  I repeated her answers to Jackson.

  “Tell her I’m on my way. Tell her do not, I repeat, do not leave the bedroom until I get there. Which window is her bedroom window?” Jackson said.

  I asked Maria and then relayed the information to Jackson.

  “Tell her to stay in the bedroom,” he said, “away from the windows, down low. I’ve got more cars on the way.”

  I repeated his instructions. “Is Nicholas sleeping near the window?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t want to wake him up. I don’t want him to get scared.”

  “Okay. That’s good. Just stay calm.”

  “They’re there,” he said. “Two more cars. Three more on the way.”

  “Maria, some more cops just got to the house. Just stay put, okay? You’re going to be fine.”

  “Okay.”

  “Did you move something in front of the door?”

  “A chair.”

  “What kind of chair? Not a little one?”

  “A wing back. I can’t move the dresser. It’s too heavy.”

  A wing back. Not heavy enough.

  She started to cry again. “Someone’s pounding on the front door.”

  “Who? Is it the police?” I asked.

  “I can’t tell.”

  I asked Jackson if the police were at the door.

  “Maria, it’s the police. Jackson just told them you weren’t going to answer. Did it stop?”

  “Yes. Where are they? Did they go around back?”

  “Detective, did the police go to the back of the house?”

  “They’re surrounding the place. He’s gone.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He spoke into his radio again.

  “They’ve got someone on every side of the house,” he said.

  “Are you sure he’s not in the house? What about the broken window?” I asked.

  He spoke into the radio again. Then back to me, “Looks like he threw a rock through the kitchen window. Hole’s not big enough for a man to fit through.”

  “Are you positive?” I asked.

  He spoke into the radio again.

  “Affirmative. Footprints confirm it. He walked right past the window. Didn’t even stop.”

  I repeated this to Maria.

  “Where are you?” I asked Jackson.

  “Two miles away,” he said. “McKnight’s on his way to your place.”

  My place. Pryne was headed my way. I hadn’t even thought of that.

  “Is he the only one?” I asked, suddenly envious of all the squad car activity at Maria’s house.

  “No,” he said. “Do not answer the door until you hear a confirm from me. To anyone.”

  “Okay,” I said. Then into my other phone, “Maria, are you still there?”

  “Still here,” she said.

  “Jackson’s almost there. Hang on, okay?”

  “Okay.” She paused. “I’m glad you answered the phone.”

  “Me too.”

  “Willie was right. I do need help.”

  “You and me both.”

  Jackson showed up at her house a few minutes later, and McKnight eventually got to mine, along with a half dozen young buff Dallas Police Department officers who called me ma’am and stood solemnly at intervals outside my house, drinking my hot chocolate and leaving little puffs of steam in the cold night air as they spoke to one another.

  Gordon Pryne’s footprints went straight through Maria’s back yard, into the alley, and down toward Lemmon Avenue, a major thoroughfare that cuts east-west through the city for miles. They lost his tracks there.

  The police took Maria and Nicholas to a friend’s house and put a car on her street.

  Since Gordon Pryne never showed up at my place that night, and since I had nowhere to go, they put a squad car in front of my house and left me alone.

  I paced around for a while, unable to settle myself down. At 5:00 a.m. I checked the weather report. Freezing rain and snow all day. Temperatures in the twenties.

  I went back to bed and miraculously got some sleep. I woke up at noon, checked to see if the DPD had abandoned me during the cold, dark night. They were out there, in plain view, right in front of my house. A little gossip fodder for my neighbors. I gave the cops a wave and went into the kitchen to start a pot of tea.

  My eye caught the rattrap I’d baited before I’d gone to bed last night. I peered inside to see if I’d caught anything.

  The trap was empty. The peanut butter was gone.

  Sneaky little beasts.

  17

  Eating chili alone is an unsatisfying experience. In fact, in Texas it just isn’t done. It’s practically a sin.

  So while I fried up the bacon to produce the grease to brown the onions in, I racked my brain for someone to call.

  I tried David, of course. Snow days are excellent boyfriend days, if you have one who is good company, which I do. But he was iced in way out in Hillsboro, which would do me exactly no good at all. He did express appropriate sympathy at my plight and anguish that he could not hop in his car and race all the way to Dallas to dine with me. Thin consolation.

  I put some bread in my new pink Barbie toaster—my Christmas gift from Christine Zocci—and got my address book, flipping all the way up to L before I found someone I thought I could stand to spend the afternoon with. Helene Levine. She’d moved in from the suburbs last year and now lived about two miles away, in a high rise down on Turtle Creek. In this weather, that was less than an hour’s drive.

  I called her but got no answer. Where could she be with the roads like they were? She was sixty-eight years old, had arthritic knees, and drove a Mercedes sedan. Plus she’s from New Jersey and hates the cold. No way was she out on the ice today.

  My toast popped up, a little silhouette of Barbie browned into the bread. I spread some mayonnaise over Barbie’s face, sliced some tomatoes, made myself a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, and kept flipping through my address book.

  M was populated solely by John Mulvaney. No thanks.

  As I flipped past empty pages, I was reminded once again that I had essentially no friends. This horrifying thought had flitted through my mind a few days before when I’d been trying to think of someone to stay with. The day the note came from Gordon Pryne. But I hadn’t had time to let it bother me. Now it settled on me like a bad smell.

  What was wrong with me? I’m a likeable person. Okay, I�
��m a little tense. And I tend to diagnose people whether they ask me to or not. And I have a teeny case of obsessive-compulsive inclination. And I can be pretty negative and a tiny bit hostile. And I’m a little controlling.

  I scrolled back through my mind and tried to remember the last time I’d let David pick the movie. That could have been months ago.

  Oh, and my thighs were liquefying even as I sat here eating thick-slab maple-sugar bacon between two slices of Barbie-toasted Wonder bread smeared with Hellmann’s Real Mayonnaise. I can’t help it if I hate fat-free. At least I work out.

  I finished my sandwich and started chopping an onion, taking my frustration out on it by hacking it into tiny, satisfying little bits. I threw them into the pan and smiled at the sizzle. I stirred them around, wondering if the aroma was making the rats hungry. It could be just them and me for snow-day chili.

  The phone rang.

  “Dr. Foster, this is Detective Jackson with the Dallas Police Department.” As though I knew lots of other Detective Jacksons.

  “Bad news and worse news. Which one do you want?”

  “You pick.”

  “Okay. Starting with worse. Gordon Pryne is still at large.”

  “That’s not exactly news. What else?”

  “We found a print on the note.”

  “And?”

  “It’s not his.”

  “Whose is it?”

  “The print remains unidentified.”

  I translated. “You mean, you don’t know whose it is.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Why is that bad news?”

  “It means he’s working with someone.”

  “Oh.” That was bad news. “But you’re still running the prints, or whatever, to find a match.”

  “Ran it through AFIS this morning.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Should have come up with a match by now, unless his prints have changed.”

  “How would someone change their fingerprints? I thought that was impossible.”

  “Meth addicts get burns on their fingers. Burn heals, the print changes. Manual labor can wear the prints down. Brick laying, things like that. Guy like Pryne doesn’t know anyone respectable. He’s running with someone, they got a record. They got a record, they got a print.”

  It started to rain again. Not exactly rain, though. More like one of those Slurpees from 7-Eleven.