Nightlife_ A Novel Part 31

"Yes. He and I already lived through this once in Flagstaff. You notice that last night he didn't do anything else-didn't try to save me, didn't call the fire department, didn't wake the neighbors. If I had managed to die, he would have gone to the funeral to see if she showed up."

He stared at her for a few seconds. "Would you like to be removed from the case?"

"What? No, of course not."

"Would you like to have someone a.s.signed to work the case with you?"

"At the point where there's a fresh lead to follow, I'd like a task force. An army. But at the moment, all that can be done is to circulate her pictures to get people to recognize her while she's still in the area, or tell us where and when they saw her."

"What do you think the chance is?"

"I don't know. People have recognized her before, but every time she turns up she makes fewer and fewer mistakes. I have her fingerprints, but having them doesn't help me find her, because they don't match any that are contained in the databases. She's never been arrested, served in the military, or applied for any professional license. I think that if I ask enough people and circulate her picture enough, somebody is going to remember seeing her, and tell me exactly where she is." She stood up. "I've got to get her soon, Mike. She's killing people faster now, and she's getting better at it."

46.

Every day at eleven, when everyone else had gone to work and the halls were empty, Judith Nathan put on a sweatshirt and jeans and went to her mailbox in the lobby of her apartment building. Today there was an ad for a dating service, a sheet of coupons for local stores that carried things like lawn furniture and garden hoses, and one big brown manila envelope. She took it out, read the return address, and hurried back to her apartment to open it.

The envelope was full of mail forwarded from her Solara Estates mailbox in Denver. She quickly shuffled through the junk mail and bills, and found one white envelope that she had been hoping for. She held it and let her fingers tell her that the answer to her application had been positive. She tore it open. There it was-her new credit card. It was the one she had ordered as a second card on the account of the young woman she had met in a club in Denver. And there was her name, embossed along the bottom: Catherine Hobbes.

It was a wonderful thing to have. The billing address was the Solara Estates mailbox in Denver, so n.o.body but Judith would ever get a bill for it. n.o.body else would ever know it existed. Judith held the card in her hand while she searched the desk under her printer. She found the driver's license she had made to go with the credit card, and looked at it. There were some good touches on this one that she had added in the last batch of ID cards. This one had a little round sticker that said if she was killed she was willing to be an organ donor.

Judith had been preparing for this day for a long time. She had taken out a library card in the name Catherine Hobbes at the library in Lake Oswego, a couple of miles outside Portland, and opened a health club membership. She had made a social security card. Now she put all of the identification into a small wallet, so that the driver's license with her picture was behind the plastic window that was visible when she opened it. She practiced holding it open when she took out the credit card, so an observer could see several other cards with the name Catherine Hobbes embossed on them.

She went out during the afternoon to play with her new credit card. She considered the new name, repeated it to herself many times, and thought about the look she wanted. Judith drove to the mall and rode the department store escalator to the fourth floor, where the designer clothes were displayed, and was drawn to a tailored charcoal pantsuit because she had seen Catherine Hobbes on television wearing something similar. The only pantsuit she remembered ever owning was one she had bought to fly to New York once with Carl, and then never worn again. She had never worked in the sort of job where women wore suits. Most of her clothes had been dresses she had picked because they looked like they would be worn by someone she wanted to be-someone glamorous and feminine. During the day she had worn casual tops and pants. But as she stood in the dressing room looking at the four views of herself, she decided that she liked herself this way.

Catherine Hobbes was a cop, and she probably carried a gun on her somewhere. Would one of these suits have room for a gun? Where? She raised and lowered her arms, tried turning around to get a better view. Some male cops wore guns in shoulder holsters, but that would be an impossible look on a woman in a close-fitting, tailored coat. She supposed Catherine Hobbes wore a small pistol in a clip-on holster, probably at the spine, where the coat would cover it when she stood up, or maybe slightly to the right, where it was easy to reach. Judith looked down at the pants. She could even conceive of Catherine Hobbes with a gun in an ankle holster. There was room.

Judith kept trying on suits until she had found four that she liked. She selected the coats one size too large to give her extra room, then carried her purchases to the sales counter, where the girl at the cash register took her Catherine Hobbes credit card and asked, apologetically, to see her license. Judith opened her wallet and held it up so the girl could see it. The girl looked at it, said, "Thanks," and charged the purchases to the card.

Judith signed the slip, took the suits to her car, and went to lunch at La Mousse to celebrate her new card. Afterward she bought new shoes to go with the suits. She imagined that Catherine Hobbes would wear flats that were elegant but would allow her to run if she had to.

When Judith got back to her apartment, she turned on her television while she hung up her new clothes, and listened until the five o'clock news came on. Then she stood and watched. The news man said, "For months Sergeant Catherine Hobbes, a homicide detective in the Portland Police Bureau, has been searching for a young woman who is suspected of killing local businessman Dennis Poole. Police now believe it was that young woman who set fire to Sergeant Hobbes's Adair Hill home last night and shot to death a Los Angeles private investigator. Here is the most recent photograph of her, taken a few months ago for a California driver's license."

Judith looked at the picture of Rachel Sturbridge on the television. The hair was long and looked almost black in the picture. The eyes were her original pale blue, and the face looked fat to her. The female half of the news couple said, "She is described as five feet five, one hundred and twenty pounds, with brown hair and blue eyes. She is to be considered armed and dangerous. If you do see her, police say, do not attempt to detain her. Just call nine-one-one, and the police will do the rest."

She watched with curiosity, but it was a detached curiosity. She had changed her hair color to match Ty's in Arizona, so it was a sandy blond, and she had been wearing the blue contacts, so her eyes were a deeper blue. She had lost some weight since then and changed the kind of clothes she wore. She walked into the bathroom, looked in the mirror, and felt safe. She turned off the television and went to the telephone to call Greg at work.

"Hey, Greg. Are you working late tonight?"

"Not anymore. At least not if this is who I hope it is."

"Well, I hope it is too, because if it isn't, then you're hoping for somebody else," she said. "I'll tell you what. If you'll come right over here after work, I'll take you out tonight."

"Take me out?" he said. "You don't have to do that."

"Not have to, want to. You've been taking me everywhere for weeks, so it's my turn to take you."

"Well, okay," he said uneasily. "What do you want me to wear?"

"Whatever you have on now. I said I wanted you to come right from work."

An hour later, when he rang the bell, she said to the intercom, "Did you come straight from work?"

"Yes."

She pushed the b.u.t.ton to unlock the front door and waited for him in the hallway. When he came up the carpeted stairs, she saw that he was carrying flowers again. She let him in and closed the door. "So, you raise flowers at work?"

"Well, no. They sell them on the way, though."

"You're not very sure of yourself, are you?"

"I guess I'm not," he said. "I keep wondering if I'll wake up and you won't exist."

"If you do, don't tell me. Come on. We're going to dinner."

She drove him to a restaurant called Sybil's. She had chosen it because it was quiet and the lights were dim. While Greg was in the men's room, she moved the candle away from the center of the table so the light would be off their faces, and studied the place. She had gotten into the habit of looking at the faces of people around her to detect signs of recognition. She was comfortable tonight, because it was too early to be crowded, and the waiters sat the first customers to arrive in the dim private s.p.a.ces along the walls, leaving the center tables empty and the aisles clear for serving. Later the dining room would fill up.

She knew that Greg always felt best when the light was dim. As they ate, she judged that he was happy because they were at this remote table, and thought how pathetic it was that such a good person should be so self-conscious about his scarred face. She knew that he was grateful to her for keeping him out of the light. He probably thought she was the most sensitive, considerate person he had ever met, because she arranged to protect him without ever alluding to it. It would never occur to him that she had done it because she didn't want people looking too closely at her face, either.

When the check came in its leather folder, Judith palmed her Catherine Hobbes card, put it on the bill, and clapped the folder shut. The waiter s.n.a.t.c.hed it up quickly and disappeared. A few minutes later he was back with it, she signed the slip, and she and Greg left.

After dinner they walked and she pretended to discover a club called the Mine, where promising music groups came to test new songs on a live audience. But tonight was a weeknight, so the band was an unenthusiastic, workmanlike group of middle-aged men who covered old rock hits. It didn't matter that they weren't inspired, only that Judith was out at night with a man who adored her, and she was paying for everything with a Catherine Hobbes credit card.

She ordered Greg a scotch and herself a martini. As they drank, she watched him, and decided she must get the maximum amount of pleasure out of him, even if she had to risk losing the use of him. As soon as they finished their drinks, she made Greg get up and dance with her. Like nearly all tall men, he was an awkward dancer, but at least his movements were only stiff and abbreviated. He was aware that his purpose was to provide a partner so she could dance, so he dutifully remained on his feet until she let him sit down and have another drink.

She drove Greg to her apartment, and then kept him for the night. She loved being out so much that she forced him to go out every night for the rest of the week. She insisted that every second time she be permitted to pay, and when she did, she paid with her Catherine Hobbes credit card.

The following Tuesday, Judith went out and bought a pile of magazines. She drove home and spent hours looking at pictures of women until she found the right one. Then she cut the page from the magazine and took it to a hair stylist's shop. She had the stylist copy the cut and strawberry-blond color in the picture exactly. It was a three-step process and she had to endure the stylist's lectures about the damage that frequent dyeing had done to her hair. When she came out, she drove back to her apartment and stared at herself in the mirror for a long time, holding up a hand mirror so she could see from every angle. "Catherine," she whispered.

47.

Catherine Hobbes's insurance company helped her rent an apartment not far from the police bureau. It was on Northeast Russell Street, about two blocks east of Legacy Emmanuel Hospital. The apartment building tenants all seemed to be young nurses, interns, and medical technicians. They used the place in shifts: no matter what time of the day or night she entered, there were people in medical uniforms coming in or out.

Catherine had not yet decided what she wanted to do about her burned house. The fire insurance would pay to rebuild it, but she was not sure if that was what she really wanted. At times she would awaken in the night and feel the same panic she had felt the night when she had seen flames glowing beyond the closed blinds. At those moments it felt good to her to be living in an apartment in a big building surrounded by people, and to hear the rea.s.suring sounds of their footsteps in the hallway at all hours.

Catherine had been a cop for seven years now. She had seen traumatized people-witnesses and victims-suffer various kinds of aftereffects, and she recognized that hers was a very mild one. But she also knew that as long as Tanya Starling entertained some fantasy of killing her, it was not a great idea to rebuild the house and live in it alone.

When she had talked to Joe Pitt on the telephone about her burned house, she had started to cry. He had said, "What's the matter? Are you hurt or something?"

"No. I guess I'm crying about my house."

"What about it? Wasn't it insured?"

"Of course it was. I just miss it."

"So you'll rebuild it, exactly the same, except maybe fireproof and with a great alarm system."

"It won't be the same. And besides, I don't even know if I want to. It wasn't that great, objectively. I just loved it."

"So while you're thinking about it, I'll come up there and rent a house for a while. You can live with me."

That brought up even more complications. She had been holding Joe Pitt at bay. She had kept him from flying up to Portland the minute he'd learned that her house had burned. Every day he called, and every day he repeated the offers: they could rent a house or apartment together and he would protect her. She appreciated that instinct in men, that unfounded confidence that their sheer bulk and aggressiveness would prevent disasters.

Joe Pitt was the first man she'd had romantic feelings for in a long time, and she was cautious: she didn't want to suddenly collapse and become dependent on him, and she feared that artificial intimacy might be worse for the relationship than too much distance at this stage. She said, "As soon as you finish the cases you've taken on and feel like coming up, I'd love to see you in Portland. If I get any time off, I'll use it to fly to L.A. But I won't live with you right now. And I don't plan to go anywhere until I've got Tanya."

She had stopped calling the case "the Dennis Poole murder." It was now "Tanya Starling" when she thought of it, and she thought about it all the time. Tanya was evolving. She killed more easily, and with increasing frequency, but she seemed to be able to disappear afterward. She was going to keep killing until somebody stopped her, and stopping her was becoming more difficult.

Catherine stayed at the office late for the next two evenings, backtracking, making telephone calls to the witnesses who had met Tanya Starling in any of her guises. She called neighbors, people who had bought Tanya's cars, clerks at hotels. She asked them everything she could think of that might help her find Tanya. She was looking for quirks, for compulsive behavior, preferences and habits that might limit the search area or give her an idea of where to look and what to look for.

She spoke with homicide detectives in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Flagstaff to be sure that any new information from the crime scenes was being sent to her, and asked them for any new theories they might have, any leads they might be following. When there was spare time, she would send pictures of Tanya Starling to businesses that might find themselves dealing with Tanya Starling under some new name: banks, car rental agencies, hotels.

At night when she came back to her apartment there were telephone messages. Each night she had to spend time rea.s.suring her parents that she was all right, that she would not be better off living with them than in a small dingy apartment with practically no furniture, and that she was eating and sleeping regularly. Always she had to fend off Joe Pitt's offers of help, protection, and various kinds of comfort. She was becoming increasingly devoted to finding Tanya Starling, and increasingly isolated. Comfort was distraction.

On the third night after the fire, Catherine had just returned to her new apartment when an unfamiliar buzz startled her. It seemed so loud that it made her stiffen, but even as her muscles tensed she realized that the buzz was only the intercom on the wall near her door. She pressed the talk b.u.t.ton. "Yes?"

The voice from the speaker said, "Catherine? Is that you inside this box?"

She laughed. "Joe?"

"I guess it is you in there," he said. "If this is a bad time I can come back at a worse one."

She pressed the other b.u.t.ton, which released the outer door lock. "Get in here."

Catherine waited inside her apartment for a few seconds, then flung open her door, walked to the door of the elevator, and waited there. She was angry at herself. She had said too much to Joe on the telephone, sounded weaker and needier than she was. She had made him drop everything to fly all the way to Portland to hold her hand when they both had important things to do. She had used up a call for help, wasted one of her chances to say, "I'm in trouble and I need to be with you right now."

The elevator door opened and Joe Pitt stepped out. He was grinning, holding a briefcase in one hand and a long white box in the other. He kissed her on the cheek and handed her the box.

"Thanks. I don't suppose these are roses?"

"I'm a bit ashamed of that, because I'm usually more original, so don't tell any of the other girls, okay?"

"I'll keep it to myself." She led him to the door of her apartment and pushed it open. "I'd hate to see your legend crumble."

"I knew you'd understand."

She closed the door and locked the bolt, then set the box on the dining table and opened it. There were a dozen long-stemmed roses with pink and orange petals. She said, "They're gorgeous, Joe." She put her arms around him and gave him a deep, lingering kiss. After a moment she pulled away to look down. "Are you handcuffed to your briefcase?"

"I was being distracted by an erotic daydream and forgot." He set the briefcase on the table, opened it, and pulled out a salt shaker and a small freshly baked loaf of bread. "Somebody had to bring bread and salt to inaugurate your new place, so I got some on the way to the airport."

"Thank you," said Catherine. "You think just like my grandmother."

He turned in place and looked around at the spa.r.s.e, utilitarian furniture and the bare walls. "And quite a place it is too. It's a lot like the apartments in L.A. favored by hookers from the former Soviet bloc. They like the no-frills aesthetic. I've only seen them on a professional basis, of course."

"Theirs?"

"Mine," he said.

"That's good," said Catherine. "I think like my grandmother too, and we have an agreement."

"I haven't forgotten," he said. "It's been kind of hard to be away from you."

She could foresee that he was going to bring up the idea of living together again, so she diverted his attention back to the briefcase. "Are you using that thing as an overnight bag?"

"No. I dropped my suitcase off at the hotel while I was waiting for you to get home from work." He reached into the briefcase and pulled out a thick stack of manila file folders. "These are just a few odds and ends I dug up for you. I stopped by Jim Spengler's office and picked up copies of interview transcripts from people who saw Nancy Mills in L.A. He also had some stills made up from security tapes at the Promenade Mall. One of them places her there at the same time as Rachel Sturbridge's bank manager from San Francisco, who got picked up there and killed. There's an a.n.a.lysis from a profiler, some reports from a blood-spatter expert and a ballistics expert."

Catherine looked at the thick stack of files, then picked up the profiler's file and looked at the first page. "This isn't from the LAPD. It says 'Property of Pitt Investigations.' You paid a profiler? This one says 'Pitt' too. And this one."

Joe waved his hand to dismiss it. "I had a few people I've used on cases before take a look at what we had, that's all. There isn't much there that you haven't already figured out on your own, and there isn't anything to tell you where Tanya is, but sometimes one little item in a report can give you an idea."

Catherine looked up at him. "Flowers and case files? What could be more romantic?"

He shrugged. "It's what we do, Cath. There's no use pretending you're somebody else, or that I am. We hunt down killers. I hope something here helps you get her."

"You're worried about me."

"Of course I am."

"Joe, this is my fault, and I'm sorry. I've been whining to you about the case, and about my house, and I'm sure I've played the whole episode for all the sympathy I could get. I guess I've felt so close to you intellectually and so far from you in miles that I didn't remember to use restraint. You were too far away to do anything about my troubles except listen. I talked my head off, but not so you would come and solve my problems for me. I just wanted to talk about them. You understand?"

"Sure I do. I was reacting to what happened, not to what you said about it. She's tried to get you killed in two different ways. I want her caught now."

"Me too." Catherine picked up the roses, took them into the kitchen, and started searching the cupboards.

"What are you looking for?"

"I just realized I don't own a vase anymore." She opened the refrigerator, took out a large jar that had a little Italian sauce in the bottom, rinsed it in the sink, filled it with fresh water, snipped the stems of the roses, and arranged them in it.

Joe watched her. "Very beautiful."

She looked at him for a moment. "I really am glad to see you, Joe. I mean anytime. I just didn't want to drag you all the way up here to be my caretaker."

"That wasn't why I came. I just grabbed any excuse I could get to see you."

"How long do you plan to devote to that?"

"I have a return ticket for Monday. I've got to meet with a guy who knows something about a case I'm working on."