by Ed Gorman
"My pleasure."
"You're a nice guy."
He shrugged. "Occasionally I am."
"I'd like to hear more about your wife and daughter.
Sometime."
"Sometime," he said. Then, "We need some sleep. Morning's going to come early."
She tightened her grip on his hand. The desperation was back in her eyes. "I just hope I didn't kill anybody."
He stroked her fingers gently and said, "You need sleep. That's the only thing to worry about now."
"You really don't think I killed him?"
"No, I really don't think you did."
This was what she wanted to hear, of course, and he didn't mind saying it. But he wasn't sure if it was true. He wasn't sure at all.
He felt as if he was reliving his life with Janice in some strange way-he'd once considered writing a novel with a reincarnation plot that bore an eerie likeness to tonight-but what if she was a murderer?
CHAPTER SIX
Even by the standards of the Chicago elite, the Stafford mansion was something to behold. A house and garden reporter had once noted that the place would probably intimidate the Queen of England. Tudor in design, the mansion sat on four acres of impossibly expensive land. Firs and pines kept the place from the eyes of commoners. Inside, there was a wood-burning fireplace nearly as tall as a college basketball player; patterned hardwood flooring imported from Norway; nine bathrooms, eight bedrooms, and a huge library. There was also, if one was inclined to keep score of such things, a gymnasium, a dance floor, and an art gallery that included two original Van Goghs and four original Monets. Both Tom and Molly Stafford loved the French impressionists.
At the moment, Molly Stafford wasn't thinking about art. She'd awakened a minute ago in the vast, shadowy master bedroom of the mansion. As she sat up, she realized that her husband was gone from bed. Then she saw him over by the window, staring out at the fog and drizzle. She wished she could immerse herself in her charity work, as she sometimes could. Both she and her husband knew how fortunate they were, and they spent inordinate amounts of time and money helping out with various charities, especially the Salvation Army and St. Jude's, two groups that were known to be honest and forthright (hungry, ambitious yuppies were now heading up most charities, and there was something about charity workers in Gucci shoes that thoroughly turned off Molly). She put in as much as twenty-five hours a week on her charity projects.
But there was only one thing on her mind tonight. There could be only one thing on her mind tonight.
She slipped from bed and went silently to him, sliding her arms around his shoulders and kissing him tenderly on the right side of his face. Tom was movie-star handsome; he'd been Robert Redford blond until he reached his mid-fifties. Now he was Paul Newman gray. He sat in blue silk, monogrammed pajamas. She could almost feel his weariness. He hadn't been able to sleep well for many nights.
Jenny, their twenty-five-year-old daughter, had disappeared eight days ago. There'd been no word from her or about her. At twenty-five, most young women are adults quite able to fend for themselves. But Jenny had only recently been released from a ten-month stay in a psychiatric hospital following a horrible depression. "We'll find her," Molly whispered softly. Tom patted her hand. He had been born wealthy and powerful and had spent his working years vastly expanding that wealth and power through an investment firm he'd bought as a young man. She was used to seeing him in control of virtually every situation. He was rarely rude or nasty, though he was known to explode sometimes. But not now. She could almost feel his weariness. All these sleepless nights. And the long, slowly grinding wait to hear from her-to no avail. He was as broken now as an old and enfeebled man. Three or four times, she'd heard him crying softly in the den.
"Come back to bed, honey," Molly said. "At least try and get some sleep."
He patted her hand again and wearily stood up. "I guess I'll go down to the den and try to get some work done. I may as well."
He was probably right, she thought. Lying awake, unable to sleep, was a special kind of hell. Might as well get up and get something accomplished. Work would at least briefly take his mind off his missing daughter.
He came into her arms then, and she held him with a mixture of sexual need and maternal solace. But it was only the latter he was interested in tonight. It had been this way for some time. Sex had always been cathartic for her; for him it was a deep and abiding pleasure but seemed to offer no particular psychological harbor.
"Go back to bed, sweetheart," he said quietly. "I'll see you in the morning."
Soon, he was nothing more than the sound of soft footsteps on the grand staircase.
***
The man in the silver Jag, the man Coffey had seen cruising past the room in the motel, was David Foster.
Until he was fourteen years old, Foster was fat. Very fat. So fat that when he played sandlot baseball, the boys used to say, "If you pick David for your team, he counts for two!" Real hilarious. Unless you were poor David, who was actually a hell of a nice kid.
Or unless you were his parents. They were just-so kind of people. To the manor they were born and in the manor there was-just so-no room for fatties. There were no fatties on either side of the family, so what exactly was the deal with David, anyway? They went to all the chic doctors in both Chicago and New York but not even the smartest or the chicest seemed able to do anything about David. He took injections of animal serums, he went to several different fat camps, he hung from gravity boots upside down, he jogged till he literally dropped, he sobbed, he prayed, he cursed, he pasted magazine photos (at his mother's suggestion) of teen idols (skinny teen idols) on his mirror… but not jack shit worked. He still counted for two whenever anybody chose him for sports.
And then he became a freshman in high school, and it was enough to make you believe in all those sappy TV movies where there's a miracle cure in the third act and little blind, deaf, and lame Suzie becomes a singing and dancing Broadway child prodigy overnight. He, David Alan Foster, lost all his weight.
His parents, who loved him in their icy moneyed way, now had something else to worry about. Cancer. It had to be cancer. Cancer was the only possible explanation for suddenly losing this kind of weight. They'd been selfish and vain and superficial as always and so the dark forces of the universe said. You want a skinny kid, you got a skinny kid. And zapped him with the big C. But it wasn't the big C. God knows the doctors looked. But all that had happened was that lucky David had just inexplicably lost all his weight.
And he was more than thin. He was handsome and thin.
Handsome and thin. And, boy, did he make the most of it. He slept with short girls, tall girls, white girls, black girls, yellow girls, red girls, nice girls, bad girls, sweet girls, girls who giggled, girls who wept, girls who smelled bad, girls who smelled good, girl, girls, girls-And despite this, the Age of AIDS, the worst he got for all his activity was a quick case of the crabs, which horrified his mother ("I just hope Grandma Clark never finds out about this!") and secretly amused his father, who took to talking about it with the other middle-aged men at his private club (they were past bragging about their own sexual prowess, so now they boasted of their sons'). And then he met Jenny Stafford. And meeting her, after a long circuitous chain of circumstances, was what had led him to be in the parking lot of the Econo-Nite Motel tonight.
He pulled the silver Jag over to the curb and punched in a number on his cell phone. It took six rings before there was an answer.
When a voice came on, David snapped, "The kind of money I pay you, I expect better service."
"I don't take this kind of crap, David. I've got too much business."
David said, "We've got to make our move on her. It's time."
"That's all you needed to say."
"And there's somebody I want you to check out." He gave the man the particulars on the cab and the cabbie. "Find out as soon as you can and get back to me."
"You'll be hearing from me," the man said.
And hung up.
***
The scene in the motel invaded her sleep and woke her up. She lay awake in Coffey's guest bed yearning for the days when she was a little girl. Her life had been happy then, and not just because she was rich. She'd felt satisfied and safe with her life. That was what had made her happy. She was something of a loner, true, but that was all right. She loved to read and play music and watch adventure shows. She was a huge Star Trek fan back then. Somewhere there was a family photo of her at age six with her three front teeth missing and a big grin splitting her face as two huge Spock ears sat stop her head. Then she thought: but how do I know that I was rich? That I was happy? That I liked Star Trek? The headache again. So strong she felt as if she wanted to vomit. A cold sweat all over her body. And trembling. Arms and legs. Trembling. Like a junkie.
Unfamiliar room. And this miserable headache. And could she really trust Coffey? He seemed to be innocent. But was he? But if he wasn't innocent, then who was he and what did he want?
And where did memories of a rich little girl with stupid Spock ears come from? She felt as if she were trying to give birth to another full-grown person inside her… as if she were two people and not one.
She no longer felt safe here.
She no longer trusted Coffey.
Had to get dressed. Had to get out of here.
***
The street was dark, shadow-haunted. She was hurrying, her footsteps unnaturally loud in the early-morning silence. It had rained some more, so all the buildings gleamed wetly. And emptily.
Block after block of dusty store windows, used furniture places, laundromats, pawnshops, bail bondsmen. The farther she got from Coffey's, the worse the neighborhood got.
She needed to find a cab.
All she had was the address. That was the strange thing. She'd slept a few hours in Coffey's guest bedroom and then suddenly awakened, a voice in her head. Well, not just a voice, a presence. It was as if something were pushing against her brain, hoping to dislodge it, take over the same space. There was no other way to explain it.
The presence gave her the address.
She had no idea where the address was, or what its significance might be. All she knew for sure was that the address was somehow important to her. Very important.
She walked on.
A yellow cab went around a corner two blocks down. She cursed, feeling forlorn, deserted.
Six more blocks. Long ones. Wet ones. It had started raining again.
She saw a convenience store, an oasis of light in the oppressive darkness. And parked right in front of the door of the convenience store was a taxi cab.
She hurried, before it could get away.
… she was not aware of the dark Ford van following from a distance of half a block, creeping slowly along the rain-glazed, neon-splattered streets…
The cabbie had left his car running. A brave and foolish man. The back door of the cab was unlocked. She quickly crawled inside, sat back in the darkness of the corner. The cab smelled of barf and disinfectant and cigarette smoke and dampness. A two-way radio crackled forth words up front but uselessly, like signals sent deep into empty outer space.
The cabbie took his time. He didn't come back for another five minutes or so. When he got in the cab, the entire vehicle heaved to the left and the springs sighed deeply. He was a big man, this one.
He put the cab in gear and backed out of the parking lot, the reverse gear whining all the time he used it.
He turned up the volume on the radio. An all-night talk show. A woman was talking about being raped and violated by aliens.
The cabbie didn't seem to know she was there in the back seat. She sat up and said, "I have money."
Two things happened at once: the cab driver let out an ear-shattering shout and the cab itself shot briefly to the right, into the oncoming lane. He quickly righted the vehicle.
He turned around and looked at her and said, "You just scared the shit out of me, lady!"
He had a nice face, kind of a baby face. He was probably in his late twenties and overweight by as much as fifty pounds. He wore a brown zipper jacket and a Cubs baseball cap. There was a vulnerability to him that she liked and trusted immediately.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"So now the gals are taking over, huh?"
"Taking over?"
"Yeah. You know, robbing cabbies."
"Oh, no," she said, "that's not why I'm here."
He watched her in his rearview mirror. She could see he was studying her, trying to decide for himself what she was really all about. He probably carted around a lot of really strange people in his cab. He probably knew a lot about really strange people.
"I just need a ride," she said. "As I said, I have money." She held up a fistful of dollars, the same dollars the nun had found in her wallet tonight. "I'm sorry I scared you."
"I guess I just didn't see you was all. All the cabbies gettin' killed lately, I'm just a little jumpy. So where's the address?"
She told him.
"Yeah, right, lady."
"What? Is something wrong with the address?"
"Not if you believe in fairy tales."
"Fairy tales?" she said, baffled by his words.
But before he could answer, his two-way radio began crackling. The dispatcher wanted to know if he could pick somebody up. He said that he already had a fare.
After breaking the connection, the cab driver turned up the radio a little. A caller was saying that he found it strange that an alien race would travel all the way across the galaxy just to get laid. Especially with a different species. The cab driver chuckled.
She sat back and stared out the window. They were on the Crosstown now. The rain was coming down harder. She had a bad headache. She couldn't remember her name. She felt utterly isolated. Maybe she shouldn't have left Coffey's. She liked him and he was certainly protective of her. She wanted to scream at the cab driver to turn off the nonsense radio program. She didn't want to be part of that world. She wanted to be part of Coffey's world again. His nice, warm smile. His nice, warm kitchen. His nice, warm guest bed. Why had the presence in her mind awakened her? Why had it given her this address? Where was she going anyway?
She slumped back in her seat, cold and alone, and trying to block out the inane words coming from the radio show.
She was trying very hard not to think about the man in the motel room, the dead man.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Coffey wasn't sure why he woke up. A dream, perhaps. Or a nightmare.
He lay in his dark bed, listening to fat, noisy raindrops fall from the eaves to puddles below.
He did all the usual things when he awakened at this time of night. Scratched his chest, his groin, used left leg to scratch right leg. Thought of getting up to take a pee. Thought maybe he could hold it till his official waking up a few hours later.
He wondered how the woman was doing. He felt good about her being under the same roof. He realized that this was a testament to his general loneliness. Here was a woman who might well turn out to be a murderer, but he was so taken with her that he didn't care. He didn't ever want her to leave.
His bladder got insistent. He swung his legs out from under the cover and then off the bed. The hardwood floor was cold on his bare feet. Dressed only in pajama bottoms, he padded out of the room.
He remembered so many middle of the nights when his daughter was an infant. He and Janice had taken turns getting up in the middle of the night to answer her cries. He could still recall the warm feel of her baby flesh against him and the sweet smell of her bottle formula and all her assorted belches, farts, and hiccups as he'd walked her around the kitchen, trying to get her back to sleep. Memory made him smile. Sometimes, when he was at work, he'd suddenly be overwhelmed by his feelings for her-how much he loved her and how much he feared for her. Life, especially infant life, was vulnerable to so many things-accident, disease-and even crazed ex-convicts. He wanted to hold her again in the middle of the night,
love her, and protect her-as he had failed to protect her the night of her death.
He went down the hall to the john. On the way, he passed the guest bedroom.
He went into the john and did his business. Washed his hands. Dried them. And then started walking back down the hall.
When he got to the guest bedroom, he paused. Listened. What did he expect to hear? It was unlikely that she snored like a truck driver. She was probably enjoying a nice, quiet, and exhausted sleep. With the things that had apparently happened to her, of course she'd be exhausted.
But he had this feeling. Maybe it was his cop instinct. She was gone. That's what the instinct told him. He imagined the blond man he'd spotted at the motel breaking in and kidnapping her. But, no, Coffey had a good alarm system. No matter how good the blond man might be, Coffey would have heard something.
She was gone. He knew that now. Knew it absolutely.
But what if he was wrong? What if he opened the door and she was lying there awake? It might look like he was trying to put the moves on her. He wanted to her trust him, respect him. He didn't want to look like a sexual opportunist.
There was only one way to find out if his instinct was correct. Open the door and peek in.
He opened the door. Peeked in.
In the shadowy room, he could see that the bed was made and that she was gone. He walked in, flipping on the overhead light, blinking in the sudden brightness.
No sign of turmoil. Or forced entry of any kind. The windows were solidly in place. None of the furnishings had been pushed around.
She had clearly walked out of his house of her own volition.
He hurried to the front window, to see if there was any sign of her on the street. And that was when he saw the van. He recognized it immediately-the same dark Ford van that had been in the motel parking lot. With the strange small box on the roof. Now, with him clearly visible through the window, it suddenly swept away from the curb and moved on down the block into the gloom.
