The Perfect Man SS

by Rusch, Kristine Kathryn

  But Conover didn’t seem to notice. “You didn’t tell me about the attack.”

  “I was getting to it when you interrupted me,” she said. “I’ve been getting calls from him—a dozen or more a day. Flowers, presents, letters and e-mails. I’m unlisted and I never gave him my phone number or my address. I have a private e-mail address, not the one my publisher hands out, and that’s the one he’s using. And then he followed me to the grocery store and got angry when the store security asked him to leave.”

  Conover eased her hand onto his desk, then leaned back in his chair. His touch had been gentle, and she missed it.

  “You had a date with him—”

  “A blind date. We met at the restaurant, and a friend handled the details. And no, she didn’t give him the information either.”

  “—so,” Conover said, as if she hadn’t spoken, “I assume you know his name.”

  “Josiah Wells.”

  Conover wrote it down. Then he sighed. It looked like he was gathering himself. “You have a stalker, Ms. Racette.”

  “I know.”

  “And while stalking is illegal under California law, the law is damned inadequate. I’ll get the video camera tape from the store, and if it backs you up, I’ll arrest Wells. You’ll be willing to press charges?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “That’s a start.” Conover’s world-weary eyes met hers. “but I have to be honest. Usually these guys get out on bail. You’ll need a lawyer to get an injunction against him, and your guy will probably ignore it. Even if he gets sent up for a few years, he’ll come back and haunt you. They always do.”

  Her shaking started again. “So what can I do?”

  “Your job isn’t tied to the community. You can move.”

  Move? She felt cold. “I have a house.” A life. This was her dream city. “I don’t want to move.”

  “No one does, but it’s usually the only thing that works.”

  “I don’t want to run away,” she said. “If I do that, then he’ll be controlling my life. I’d be giving in. I’d be a victim.”

  Conover stared at her for a long moment. “Tell you what. I’ll build the strongest case I can. That might give you a few years. By then, you might be willing to go somewhere new.”

  She nodded, stood. “I’ll bring everything in tomorrow.”

  “I’d like to pick it up, if you don’t mind. See where he left it, whether he’s got a hidey hole near the house. How about I come to you in a couple of hours?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “You got a peephole?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Use it. I’ll knock.”

  She nodded. Then felt her shoulders relax slightly, more than they had for two weeks. Finally, she had an ally. It meant more to her than she had realized it would. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” he said. “Let’s wait until this is all over.”

  All over. She tried to concentrate on the words and not the tone. Because Detective Conover really didn’t sound all that optimistic.

  ***

  The biggest bouquet waited for her on the front porch. She could see it from the street, and any hope that the meeting with Conover aroused disappeared. She knew without getting out of the car what the bouquet would be: calla lilies, tiger lilies and Easter lilies, mixed with greens and lilies of the valley. It was a bouquet Marybeth Campbell was designing the day she met Robert Newman in All My Kisses, a bouquet he said was both romantic and sad. (Not to mention expensive: the flowers weren’t in season at the same time.)

  She left the bouquet on the porch without reading the card. Conover would be there soon and he could take the whole mess away. She certainly didn’t want to look at it.

  After all this, she wasn’t sure she ever wanted to see flowers again.

  When she got inside, she found twenty-three messages on her machine, all from Josiah, all apologies, although they got angrier and angrier as she didn’t answer. He must have thought she had come straight home. What a surprise he would have when he realized that she had gone to the police.

  She rubbed her wrist, noting the soreness and cursing him under her breath. In addition to the bruises, her wrist was slightly swollen and she wondered if he hadn’t managed to sprain it. Just her luck. He would damage her arm, which she needed to write. She got an ice pack out of the freezer and applied it, sitting at the kitchen table and staring at nothing.

  Move. Give up, give in, all because she was feeling lonely and wanted to go on a date. All because she wanted a little flattery, a nice evening, to meet someone safe who could be — if nothing else — a friend.

  How big a mistake had that been?

  Big enough, she was beginning to realize, to cost her everything she held dear.

  ***

  That night, after dinner, she baked herself a chocolate cake and covered it with marshmallow frosting. It was her grandmother’s recipe—comfort food that Paige normally never allowed herself. This time, though, she would eat the whole thing and not worry about calories or how bad it looked. Who would know?

  She made some coffee and was sitting down to a large piece, when someone knocked on her door.

  She got up and walked to the door, feeling oddly vulnerable. If it was Josiah, he would only be a piece of wood away from her. That was too close. It was all too close now.

  She peered through the peephole, just like she promised Conover she would, and she let out a small sigh of relief. He was shifting from foot to foot, looking down at the bouquet she had forgotten she had left there.

  She deactivated the security system, then unlocked the three deadbolts and the chain lock she had installed since this nightmare began. Conover shoved the bouquet forward with his foot.

  “Looks like your friend left another calling card.”

  “He’s not my friend,” she said softly, peering over Conover’s shoulder. “And he left more than that.”

  Conover’s glance was worried. What did he imagine?

  “Phone calls,” she said. “Almost two dozen. I haven’t checked my e-mail.”

  “This guy’s farther along than I thought.” Conover pushed the bouquet all the way inside with his foot, then closed the door, and locked it. As he did, she reset the perimeter alarm.

  Conover slipped on a pair of gloves and picked up the bouquet.

  “You could have done that outside,” she said.

  “Didn’t want to give him the satisfaction,” Conover said. “He has to know we don’t respect what he’s doing. Where can I look at this?”

  “Kitchen,” she said, pointing the way.

  He started toward it, then stopped, sniffing. “What smells so good?”

  “Chocolate cake. You want some?”

  “I thought you wrote.”

  “Doesn’t stop me from baking on occasion.”

  He glanced at her, his dark eyes quizzical. “This hardly seems the time to be baking.”

  She shrugged. “I could drink instead.”

  To her surprise, he laughed. “Yes, I guess you could.”

  He carried the bouquet into the kitchen and set it on a chair. Then he dug through the flowers to find the card.

  It was a different picture of their date. The photograph looked professional, almost artistic, done in black and white, using the light from the candles to illuminate her face. At first glance, she seemed entranced with Josiah. But when she looked closely, she could see the discomfort on her face.

  “You didn’t like him much,” Conover said.

  “He was creepy from the start, but in subtle hard-to-explain ways.”

  “Why didn’t you leave?”

  “I was raised to be polite. I had no idea he was crazy.”

  Conover grunted at that. He opened the card. The handwriting inside was the same as all the others.

  My future and your future are the same. You are my heart and soul. Without you, I am nothing. —Josiah

  She closed her eyes, felt that fluttery fear rise in he
r again. “There’ll be a ring somewhere in that bouquet.”

  “How do you know?” Conover asked.

  She opened her eyes. “Go look at the last page of All My Kisses. Robert sends a forgive-me bouquet and in it, he puts a diamond engagement ring.”

  “This bouquet?”

  “No. Josiah already used that one. I guess he thought this one is more spectacular.”

  Conover dug, and then whistled. There, among the stems, was a black velvet ring box. He opened it. A large diamond glittered against a circle of sapphires in a white gold setting.

  “Jesus,” he said. “I could retire on this thing.”

  “I always thought that was a gaudy ring,” Paige said, her voice shaking. “But it fit the characters.”

  “Not to your taste?”

  “No.” She sighed and sank back into her chair. “Just because I write about it doesn’t mean I want it to happen to me.”

  “I think you made that clear in the precinct today.” He put the ring box back where he found it, returned the card to its envelope and set the flowers on the floor. “Mind if I have some of that cake?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” She got up and cut him a piece of cake, then poured some coffee.

  When she turned around, he was grinning.

  “What did I do?” she asked.

  “You weren’t kidding about polite,” he said. “I didn’t come here for a tea party, and you could have said no.”

  She froze in place. “Was this another of your tests? To see if I was really that polite?”

  “I wish I were that smart.” He took the plate from her hand. “I was getting knocked out by the smell. My mother used to make this cake. It always was my favorite.”

  “With marshmallow frosting?”

  “And that spritz of melted chocolate on top, just like you have here.” He set the plate down and took the coffee from her hand. “Although in those days, I would have preferred a large glass of milk.”

  “I have some—”

  “Sit.” If anything, his grin had gotten bigger. “Forgive me for being so blunt, but what the hell did you need with a blind date?”

  There was admiration in his eyes—real admiration, not the sick kind she’d seen from Josiah. She used her fork to cut a bite of cake. “I was lonely. I don’t get out much, and I thought, what could it hurt?”

  He shook his head. That weary look had returned to his face. She liked its rumpled quality, the way that he seemed to be able to take the weight of the world onto himself and still stand up. “What a way to get disillusioned.”

  “Because I’m a romance writer?”

  “Because you’re a person.”

  They ate the cake in silence after that, then he gripped his coffee mug and leaned back in the chair.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’d forgotten that little taste of childhood.”

  “There’s more.”

  “Maybe later.” And there was no smile on his face any more, no enjoyment. “I have to tell you a few things.”

  She pushed her own plate away.

  “I looked up Josiah Wells. He’s got a sheet.”

  She grabbed her own coffee cup. It was warm and comforting. “Let me guess. The political conferences he stopped going to.”

  Conover frowned at her. “What conferences?”

  “Here in San Francisco. He was active in local politics. That’s how my friend Sally met him.”

  “And he stopped?”

  “Rather suddenly. I thought, after all this started, that maybe—”

  “I’ll check into it,” Conover said with a determination she hadn’t heard from him before. “His sheet’s from San Diego.”

  “I thought he was from here.”

  Conover shook his head. “He’s not a dot-com millionaire. He made his money on a software system back in the early nineties, before everyone was into this business. Sold his interest for 30 million dollars and some stock, which has since risen in value. About ten times what it was.”

  Her mouth had gone dry. Josiah Wells had lied to both her and Sally. “Somehow I suspect this is important.”

  “Yeah.” Conover took a sip of coffee. “He stalked a woman in San Diego.”

  “Oh, God.” The news gave her a little too much relief. She had been feeling alone. But she didn’t want anyone else to be experiencing the same thing she was.

  “He killed her.”

  “What?” Paige froze.

  “When she resisted him, he shot her and killed her.” Conover’s soft gaze was on her now, measuring. All her relief had vanished. She was suddenly more terrified than she had ever been.

  “You know it was him?”

  “I read the file. They faxed it to me this afternoon. All of it. They had him one hundred percent. DNA matches, semen matches—”

  She winced, knowing what that meant.

  “— the fibers from his home on her clothing, and a list of stalking complaints and injunctions that went on for pages.”

  The cake sat like a lump in her stomach. “Then why isn’t he in prison?”

  “Money,” Conover said. “His attorneys so out-classed the DA’s office that by the end of the trial, they could have convinced the jury that the judge had done it.”

  “Oh, my god,” Paige said.

  “The same things that happened to you happened to her,” Conover said. “Only with her those things took about two years. With you it’s taking two weeks.”

  “Because he feels like he knows me from my books?”

  Conover shook his head. “She was a TV business reporter who had done an interview with him. He would have felt like he knew her too.”

  “What then?” Somehow having the answer to all of that would make her feel better—or maybe she was just lying to herself.

  “These guys are like alcoholics. If you take a guy through AA, and keep him sober for a year, then give him a drink, he won’t rebuild his drinking career from scratch. He’ll start at precisely the point he left off.”

  She had to swallow hard to keep the cake down. “You think she wasn’t the only one.”

  “Yeah. I suspect if we look hard enough, we’ll find a trail of women, each representing a point in the escalation of his sickness.”

  “You can arrest him, right?”

  “Yes.” Conover spoke softly. “But only on what he’s done. Not on what he might do. And I don’t think we’ll be any more successful at holding him than the San Diego DA.”

  Paige ran her hand over the butcher block table. “I have to leave, don’t I?”

  “Yeah.” Conover’s voice got even softer. He put a hand on hers. She looked at him. It wasn’t world-weariness in his eyes. It was sadness. Sadness from all the things he’d seen, all the things he couldn’t change.

  “I’m from a small town,” she said. “I don’t want to bring him there.”

  “Is there anywhere else you can go? Somewhere he wouldn’t think of?”

  “New York,” she said. “I have friends I can stay with for a few weeks.”

  “This’ll take longer than a few weeks. You might not be able to come back.”

  “I know. But that’ll give me time to find a place to live.” Her voice broke on that last. This had been her dream city, her dream home. How quickly that vanished.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she said quietly. “Me, too.”

  ***

  He decided to stay without her asking him. He said he wanted to sift through the evidence, listen to the phone messages, and read the e-mail. She printed off all of it while she bought plane tickets on-line. Then she e-mailed her agent and told her that she was coming to the City.

  Already she was talking like the New Yorker she was going to be.

  Her flight left at 8 a.m. She spent half the night packing and unpacking, uncertain about what she would need, what she should leave behind. The only thing she was certain about was that she would need her laptop, and she spent an hour loading her files onto it. She was writin
g down the names of some moving and packing services when Conover stopped her.

  “We leave everything as is,” he said. “We don’t want him to get too suspicious too soon.”

  “Why don’t you arrest him now?” she asked. “Don’t you have enough?”

  Something flashed across his face, so quickly she almost didn’t catch it.

  “What?” she asked. “What is it?”

  He closed his eyes. If anything, that made his face look even more rumpled. “I issued a warrant for his arrest before I came here. We haven’t found him yet.”

  “Oh, God.” Paige slipped into her favorite chair. One of many things she would have to leave behind, one of many things she might never see again because of Josiah Wells.

  “We have people watching his house, watching yours, and a few other places he’s known to hang out,” Conover said. “We’ll get him soon enough.”

  She nodded, trying to look reassured, even though she wasn’t.

  ***

  About 3 a.m., Conover looked at her suitcases sitting in the middle of the dining room floor. “I’ll have to ship those to you. No sense tipping him off if he’s watching this place.”

  “I thought you said—”

  “I did. But we need to be careful. One duffel. The rest can wait.”

  “My laptop,” she said. “I need that too.”

  He sighed. “All right. The laptop and the biggest purse you have. Nothing more.”

  A few hours earlier, she might have argued with him. But a few hours earlier, she hadn’t yet gone numb.

  “I need some sleep,” she said.

  “I’ll wake you,” he said, “when it’s time to go.”

  ***

  He drove her to the airport in his car. It was an old bathtub Porsche—with the early seventies bucket seats that were nearly impossible to get into.

  “She’s not pretty any more,” he said as he tucked Paige’s laptop behind the seat, “but she can move.”

  They left at 5, not so much as to miss traffic, but hoping that Wells wouldn’t be paying attention at that hour. Conover also kept checking his rearview mirror, and a few times he executed some odd maneuvers.

  “We being followed?” she asked finally.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “But I’m being cautious.”