LoveMurder

by Saul Black

  The wretched seconds as the beam swung, clearing the darkness section by section. Any moment a shot. Any moment …

  But the room was empty. A rumpled sleeping bag. A couple of empty water bottles. A door and a window that looked out into the clearing. She went to it and peered out.

  Nothing. Just the hill’s empty incline for thirty feet, then the soft mass of the ascending trees.

  Had there been time for him to get out after the gunshot? He could still be close.

  But wherever he was he wasn’t right here right now.

  She ran back to Cassie. Eased the tape from her mouth.

  “Be calm, Cass,” she said. “It’s okay. I’ve got you. Are you hurt?”

  “I’m okay. Where is he?” Cassie gasped.

  “I don’t know. Backup’s coming. We’re getting the fuck out of here.”

  Time, like Death, was indifferent to human concerns. It took precious, aching seconds to get the tape from Cassie’s wrists. Time, Valerie knew—plenty of time, surely—for him to have heard the shot and located the shivering light, for him to make his way back from wherever he was hiding, for him to be standing in the doorway when she turned. Plenty of time, in fact, for her to realize that Death hadn’t moved on, but was merely waiting for a more cruel denouement.

  Her fingers worked, frantically, screaming against the all but overwhelming imperative to go for brute force. Valerie had a pocketknife in her purse. She saw herself handing the purse over to Torval. A pocketknife would have … More haste, less …

  “Torval, where the fuck is my backup?”

  “They should be here by now. Any second.”

  Cassie’s hands were free.

  “Keep watching the door, Cass,” Valerie said.

  “The knife,” Cassie said. “There’s a knife. Quick.”

  “Where?”

  Valerie swung the flashlight. Seconds, seconds, seconds …

  She saw it. It was on the floor by the window, lying among a scatter of empty water bottles. She ran and grabbed it. Two strokes, and Cassie’s legs were free. She collapsed into Valerie’s arms. Not all her weight, but most of it. I’m okay, she’d said. In the distension of the moment part of Valerie had wondered what that might or might not mean. Her soul searched even now, looking for the scarred aura, the fracture, the indelible stamp, the rape. Her intuitions weren’t infallible, but Cassie seemed free of that. The unbroken strength was still there. Please let it be. Please.

  “The kids,” Cassie said. She was unsteady. Valerie had to take some of her weight.

  “They’re safe. They’re home with Owen.”

  “It was John,” she said. “The fucking blind guy from—”

  “I know. Shh shh shh. It’s okay. Come on. It’s over. Can you walk?”

  “My shoes. There.”

  “Okay, quick.”

  It was another risk. But outside there was the good darkness. Valerie switched the flashlight off. Unless he was right outside the door he wouldn’t see them.

  “No noise, Cass.”

  “Give me the knife,” Cassie said.

  “Here. Wait. Put this on.”

  Valerie got out of the vest.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Cassie said.

  “No argument. Put it on.”

  Her sister’s authority. Her own ragged weakness. The blocked blood’s sudden release in her arms and legs. Cassie put the vest on. Valerie fastened it around her. A moment for their eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then the open door’s faint light coalesced. They kept close to the wall. Valerie held her around the waist, one of Cassie’s arms around her neck.

  “We’re going to the right along the porch,” she whispered. “Down the step and across into the trees. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “But quiet.”

  Was he here? Watching? Gratitude to the universe was still pounding out of Valerie, but in spite of it her stubborn cop self was outraged. He could be twenty feet away. She might never get this close to him again. And for all she knew he could have them in the crosshairs right now. He could be waiting until they thought they’d made it. Bittersweet. The bitterer, the sweeter. She knew how he worked.

  Awkwardly, they crept quickly along the porch. The night was warm and heavy around them. A forlorn fragment of Valerie’s physical system reported that she was weak from thirst. The report came without hope. It knew the bigger reality didn’t care.

  “They’re here,” Torval said.

  Valerie didn’t answer at first. She and Cassie staggered across the last twenty feet of open ground and made it into the cover of the trees. No disguising the sound, but it hardly mattered now. If he was here he would have seen them.

  “How many?”

  “A dozen officers and the FBI guys from earlier. An ambulance. There’s a chopper coming in right now.”

  Valerie could hear it. Half a mile maybe.

  “They’re going to need more,” she said. “I think he’s loose in the woods. For now get the chopper up here. Half a mile up the track there’s a cabin in a clearing. Room enough to land.”

  “Roger that,” Torval said.

  Cassie was standing bent with her arms wrapped around her middle, sobbing quietly. Valerie put her arm back around her. “Hey,” she whispered. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  “I knew you’d come,” Cassie said. “The whole time … I knew…” She couldn’t get the words out.

  Valerie held her, though she felt as if she needed holding herself.

  It was a long minute.

  35

  Valerie stayed with Cassie in the hospital. Redundant to wait around for CSI at the cabin: she knew what they were going to find—and in any case she couldn’t stand to let Cassie out of her sight for now. Owen and their mother were on their way with the boys. Mom had a car accident, but she’s fine. No point telling them anything else. (It had been difficult for Owen to carry the lie off, since he was so visibly happy.) Blood tests revealed the remnants of a hefty dose of diazepam in Cassie’s system. Nothing else. Aside from that she had a lump the size of a small egg on the back of her head. She’d chipped the edge of her sacrum when she fell. Lacerations on the wrists from the twine. Dehydration, cuts, bruises. The trauma that was greater than the sum of its parts. She was in pain, but she was whole.

  He hadn’t done anything else to her.

  It was a source of endlessly renewable joy to Valerie to see her sister, bandaged, cleaned up, attached to an IV, and surrounded by the serene whites and reliable technology of medical care. Even the plastic name tag on her wrist—CASSANDRA LOUISE HART (no adoption of Owen’s surname; she wasn’t that kind of woman, nor Owen that kind of man)—gave Valerie a feeling of deep satisfaction, testified to Cassie’s survival with prosaic innocence.

  “I don’t know if it looked fake,” Cassie said. Her voice was still hoarse. “I just know that his eyes weren’t the eyes of an old person.”

  “It’s fake,” Valerie said. “The beard, probably the hair, too. He’s not an amateur with this stuff.”

  “He broke the Mazda’s window,” Cassie said. “I guess to make anyone think it was joyriders or whatever.”

  “Well, we’ve got Officer Torval to thank for listening to his APBs like a good boy.”

  “And Katherine Glass to thank for everything else. Jesus, of all the people I don’t want to be indebted to.”

  “Yeah, I know. Me too. Shall we send her some flowers?”

  “How’s she doing it?”

  Valerie exhaled, shook her head. “It’s a bitch,” she said. “The key information—the cipher to the letter codes—is always derived from something only she would know. I won’t bore you with it, but he’s clearly designed it for her. It’s driving the Bureau nuts. I still don’t know how she got the longitude and latitude coordinates. I mean, that’s numerical. But you know, she’s not exactly a dummy.”

  Cassie’s eyes filled up. A tear hurried down her cheek. She brushed it away. “For God’s sake,” she said. “Enough with t
his blubbering.”

  Valerie smiled. Cassie had been ambushed by tears a few times since they’d brought her in. Aftershocks. Delayed relief.

  “Yeah, what’s wrong with you? Anyone would think you’d had a rough couple of days. I thought you were supposed to be tough?”

  The searchers’ sweep of the woods had been fruitless. For whatever reason, he had driven away some time between giving Cassie the shot and Valerie turning up. (Why?) Cassie remembered that the vehicle was a new-looking silver Camry, but nothing else. She’d been berating herself for not noting the plates. Stop it, Valerie had said. No one in your situation would have noted the plates. To which Cassie had simply said: You would.

  “Why wasn’t he there?” Cassie said.

  “I don’t know. Everything so far says he’s well-organized. Maybe he’s eavesdropping on police radio. Maybe he heard Torval call it in.”

  “I don’t think there was anything like that in the car. I didn’t hear anything in the cabin. But then I was out of it half the time.”

  “It might have just been luck,” Valerie said. “Maybe whatever called him away played into his hands, accidentally.”

  “Do you really think that?”

  “I don’t know. Luck’s not interested in who the good guys are.”

  “And what about this ‘fair warning’ shit? I didn’t get a postcard.”

  “He might assume I’d warned you if he knew I’d worked out the victims were all connected to me. But we don’t know that he did know that. And if he did know it, that’s a worse prospect, because how the fuck could he know?”

  A silence while Cassie worked it out.

  “He’s watching you,” she said.

  “Seems that way. And not just me. We need to get all our phones checked. Maybe time for new laptops and online IDs. For all of us.”

  “What happens now?”

  “I go back to work. You go home. The officers stay until we get him. There’s absolutely nothing to say he won’t try again. You don’t go anywhere alone, no argument.”

  “You’re not getting any,” Cassie said.

  “And you stop Mom from having a nervous breakdown.”

  “She can stay with us for a few days. I don’t like her being in that house, even with the uniforms there. I’m assuming Owen won’t divorce me for it. Not after this.”

  For a moment the two women were silent. Then Cassie took Valerie’s hand.

  “I did know you’d come,” she said. “I could see you. Driving. I tried to think what you would do.”

  Valerie felt close to tears herself. Not just of relief, nor of closeness to her sister—but of her own guilt and frailty, the nearness of this miss. Cassie had been taken because of her. If it weren’t for her being who she was, what she was, doing what she did, none of this would have happened. But then I remind myself that you’re the woman who put Katherine Glass away … He had made her, via the cunning and irresistible contortions, responsible. Morally, Valerie knew, it was uncomplicated: the families of Police were always potentially at risk. You signed up for that when you became Police. If people like her stopped being Police the bad guys had won. No one in her family—certainly not Cassie—would blame her for any of this. (Actually, her mother might, in the honest privacy of her soul. But her mother’s currency was weak; she was incapable of seeing beyond the personal, the particular. She was wholly—and sometimes aggressively—deaf to abstract argument. In the sweetest possible way, she simply had no principles, beyond the well-being of her family.) Still, it hurt. It had never come this close before. No one had ever made it about her, Valerie, personally. Sitting there with Cassie’s hand in hers she wondered if she should quit. If she had a child she’d be signing her up for the same risk. If she had a child, would she be able to carry on doing what she did? And if she could, would that be fair to her child?

  “Don’t you start,” Cassie said, sensing the state Valerie was in. “I’m allowed. I was abducted. You’ve got no excuse.”

  Valerie left after Owen, the kids, and her mother had arrived, with two officers who would make sure no one other than medical staff had access to Cassie, and even they would be double-checked. Her phone rang as she was getting into the Taurus. Susanna Arden.

  “McLuhan just called me,” she said. “Well done.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Valerie said. “Just followed directions.”

  “Do I tell her? She’s been asking ever since we sent the coordinates.”

  Valerie hesitated. It was impossible not to think that any information you gave Katherine was potential ammunition. But the fact was she’d saved Cassie’s life. If they got another package, they’d need to have her invested. If they withheld and she found out, she could fuck them over with the next one—or simply refuse to help at all.

  “She didn’t get the rest of the name, right? She doesn’t know it’s my sister?”

  “No,” Arden said. “We switched focus to the location when you told us.”

  “She’s not still looking at the material?”

  “No, she’s back in her cell. I have it all with me.”

  “Keep it that way. You can tell her we made it in time, but I don’t want her knowing who it was.”

  “Understood. I’ll give her the news, then I’m heading back to the city—unless I hear otherwise from McLuhan.”

  “If I were you I’d get out now. I’m sure our boy’s not done, but take the breather while you can. If something else comes in from him I’ll go up to Red Ridge myself. You’ve earned some R and R, agent.”

  “You can say that again,” Arden said. “I feel like I need a week in a fucking spa.”

  “Well, when we get this guy, let’s you and me go out and get bombed.” Valerie surprised herself, somewhat, saying this. She barely knew Arden, but she was so high on relief from Cassie’s survival that she had an indiscriminate love for everyone. Besides, she had liked the woman’s quiet dedication. There was the strange sorority between them now, of having Katherine Glass in their lives.

  “Count me in,” Arden said, not quite masking her own surprise at Valerie’s invitation. “By the way, she asked me to tell you she wants to see you. She was very polite about it. She said: ‘I do realize this is entirely at Detective Hart’s discretion.’ But obviously she feels like she’s earned it.”

  “Well, maybe she has,” Valerie said, although she sank at the prospect. There’s something else I want to discuss with you. She hadn’t forgotten that. She didn’t like it. On the other hand, she didn’t like it hanging over her, either. “Maybe I’ll come up there tomorrow.”

  * * *

  Late that night, Valerie and Nick lay on their bed together, more or less top to tail. They’d both just taken showers and were too warm to get under the sheets. Between them they’d gotten through a couple of bottles of Bordeaux. Valerie was shifting, gradually, to wine. It had at least the superficial identity of a civilized indulgence. “Fine wines,” as the phrase was, connoted legitimate aesthetics, like poetry or going to the opera. It sounded so much less brutal than “vodka,” which according to Nick just sounded like a Russian hit man with a contract on your liver.

  The hospital was keeping Cassie in overnight. Tomorrow Valerie would go over and talk to the officers, make sure they were properly primed. She didn’t seriously think he would try for her sister a second time, but there were her mom, the kids, Owen. She wasn’t taking any chances.

  It had been a sweet evening. Valerie’s endorphins were still waltzing from the fact of Cassie’s survival. Nick had cooked some delicious thing with chicken and white wine and cream and wild mushrooms, and for once Valerie had had an appetite. They’d eaten and drunk and had music on and Valerie had lain on the couch with her feet in his lap and given in to the feeling of relief. Not without a struggle. She was under no illusions: it wasn’t over. Katherine’s lover was still out there. He’d failed this time, but it wouldn’t be long before he tried again. Still, with Nick’s unspoken encouragement, she’d allowed hersel
f the satisfaction of having won (with Katherine’s help, unfortunately) a battle in the ongoing war. It had given her a sense of respite, and no matter how fleeting it might turn out to be, she had, eventually, surrendered to enjoying it.

  They lay together now like weary teenagers, Valerie on her back with her head on the pillows, Nick up on one elbow, looking up at her across the flatness of her belly and the swell of her breasts, his other hand moving idly over her, alternating between the sexual and the therapeutic. It was delicious to her to be languidly in possession of both options, heat between her legs when he touched her there, but also the less complicated pleasure of muscular bliss when he squeezed her aching calves and thighs. He knew her calibrations. Sex was available, but so was comfort. It came to her that she’d been far from him these last couple of weeks. He gave her room, let her go into the Work. He knew her and, unlike any other man she’d ever been with, had no interest in trying to change her. Most of the time she took it for granted. But there were these moments of renewed revelation when she realized the wealth she had in him, her own outrageous good fortune. Thinking this, now, she felt such an access of love for him that she smiled involuntarily. Nick, having bent to kiss the top of her right thigh, didn’t see it.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “What?”

  She touched his cock, very lightly with her fingertips. Felt it stir. Slid down the bed so that it was level with her mouth. Close enough for the warmth of her breath to register. She took it between her lips, softly, felt it thicken as she made the first slow, deep pass.

  It had been a while since they’d made love like this, dreamily, as if they had all the time in the world, as if nothing else mattered. Two years on, the greedy desire was still there for both of them. Even when it was just a case of getting each other off it was rarely perfunctory or merely serviceable. Or rather, on occasions when it started that way it often morphed into something more intense. Valerie was in possession of a rare certainty: she knew sex with her was the best Nick had ever had, and knew, too, the feeling was reciprocal. It ought to have made her complacent. Instead it inspired and liberated her. It didn’t feel to her like something she had to maintain. It felt to her like a wholesome power she wanted to enjoy, to push beyond its known limits into every nuance and subtlety. She had surprised herself, more than once. I’m going to give you the best loving up you’ve ever had. Part of it was sexual generosity: she loved him. Part of it was that she simply wanted to give him as much pleasure as was hers to give. But part of it was delight in herself, in knowing she could do this for him, that it nourished his idea of her, and hers of herself. It was a self-affirmation so sweet and rich it sometimes made her happily appalled at herself.