Desire Lines (40 page)

“I’ve always wanted to do this,” he whispers, “You know, Jack Nicholson …” His voice trails off into ragged breaths. “Oh—Kathryn,” he murmurs after a while, and she pulls him closer, lifting his chin to kiss him, touching his warm tongue with her own. When he shudders against her, she holds him tight with her legs, his head in her neck, smelling his fresh sweat, running her fingers through his coarse, thick hair.

After a moment he lifts his head. “Hello.”

“Hello,” she says.

“I hope you are who I think you are.”

“I hope so, too,” she murmurs, shutting her eyes against the dark.

LATER, LYING IN
bed, she says, “Jack, I have to tell you something.”

He props himself up on an elbow to look at her.

She sighs and fiddles with the sheet. “I wasn’t bonding with my mother tonight. I went to meet Hunter.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

He scratches the back of his neck. “I had a nice chat with your mom earlier. Of course, she had no idea where you were. It didn’t take a genius to figure it out.”

She sighs. “Sorry.”

“Oh, I knew something was up.” He grins. “No good reporter gives up that fast.” Then, slowly, his expression grows serious. “But if you’re going to follow through on this, you’ve got to understand what you’re doing.”

She nods.

“This guy could be capable of anything.”

“I know. I’m being careful,” she says. “I met him at a public place.” Down a long, wooded stretch of road in the middle of nowhere, she thinks, but keeps it to herself.

“Are you meeting him again?”

“I have to. I’m so close, Jack,” she says intently. “It’s like we’re locked in this game together—like chess—and every move is loaded. And if I can just figure out where he’s vulnerable …”

“Don’t kid yourself, Kathryn,” Jack says. “It’s his game. You’re just a pawn.”

She doesn’t answer. She remembers, after the divorce, when her parents would vie for her and Josh’s attention by pointing out how the other was manipulating them: “Your dad’s just bribing you,” her mother would say; “She’s using you to get to me,” her father countered. The thing is, it was usually true—but it didn’t help to know it. If she wanted their attention, then she had to play their game. So she learned to be cynical, and to take what she could get.

“Will you promise to tell me next time you see him? I want to know where you’ll be.”

“Okay,” she says. It’s not a promise and it isn’t a lie, but something in between.

Chapter 30

W
hen Kathryn reaches Gaffney the next morning on the phone, he instructs her not to come to the police station. “Dunkin’ Donuts, outer Main Street,” he says. “I won’t be in uniform.”

She brings a newspaper and sunglasses—as if, in that bright yellow car with her platinum hair, she might possibly avoid notice—and takes a circuitous route from the east side to the west side, checking in her rearview mirror to see if she’s being followed. She feels a little silly; it’s a benign, sunny day in this sleepy little city, and people seem to be going about their business with ease and leisure. But Gaffney’s caution alarms her—more than Jack’s, which she can dismiss as over-protectiveness. And she can’t shake the uneasy feeling that Jack is right: She doesn’t understand the rules of this game.

Three semis are parked together in the lot, and inside three truckers sit on stools next to each other, wolfing doughnuts from a big open box. Kathryn sits at the other end of the counter and stares at the bewildering
variety of pastries in the brightly lit display. The doughnuts are grouped by type: Kremes, Frosteds, Glazed, Jellies—and there are also muffins and sweet rolls and bagels. Bagels? When did that happen? Kathryn wonders. Then again, it’s been years since she was in one of these places. She’s found other ways to indulge her sweet tooth besides eating an entire box of Munchkins, as she and Jennifer used to do.

“What can I get ya?” demands the pimply-faced teenager behind the counter. His pink-and-orange-striped uniform looks like goofy prison duds.

“Umm …” She scans the selection. Boston Kreme, Bavarian Kreme, Chocolate Kreme, Kreme … “I guess I’ll have a Honey Bran muffin,” she says, and immediately regrets it. “No, no—change that. Wait.” Her eyes move down the rows. “I’ll have a Chocolate Frosted. And a Bavarian Kreme.”

“Is that all?”

She shakes her head. “A coffee. Regular. No, hazelnut. With milk. And—a jelly donut.” One more, what harm can it do?

“Strawberry, grape, blueberry,” he says in a bored voice.

“Um—blueberry.”

When Gaffhey walks in her mouth is full of Kreme. She washes it down with coffee, burning her tongue in the process, and stands to greet him, brushing powdered sugar off her fingers and shirt onto her shorts.

Gaffney eyes the two remaining doughnuts on her napkin and smirks. “One of those for me?”

“Ah—sure,” she says.

“Nah,” he says, “I only eat the coffee rolls. Hard to stop at one, though, isn’t it?” He sits on the stool beside her. Even out of uniform, Gaffney looks like a police officer, stiff and uncomfortable in his ironed jeans and button-down. “So,” he says after he’s ordered his roll and decaf, “tell me what’s going on.”

She tells him what she knows about Hunter—how she found out he was involved with Jennifer, how he’s been spilling pieces of information each time she’s seen him.

“Hunter,” Gaffney muses. He shrugs. “Didn’t spend much time on him. We could never find any link between them except that he was her coach. I do remember that he was smug—like he knew something we didn’t. But we never had anything on him.”

“You still don’t,” she says. “He hasn’t confessed to anything.”

“What about the tape and that picture?”

She shakes her head. “He hasn’t told me anything concrete. But I have the feeling that he might. Little things he’s said … I don’t know. It’s just a feeling. I think he’s testing me to see what I’ll do.”

Gaffney tears open two Sweet’n Low packets and pours them in his coffee. “I don’t like the sound of this. I think maybe we should bring him in for questioning.”

Her heart sinks. Damn, she thinks, not yet, not when she’s so close. “On what grounds?” she asks, trying to sound even and unbiased.

“New information about his relationship with Miss Pelletier.”

“Information from me.”

“We don’t have to reveal the source.”

She laughs. “Yeah, I’m sure he’ll have no idea.”

“Look,” Gaffney says, putting down his roll. “If he’s the one who made your friend disappear, you’re probably in a lot more trouble now than you would be if we brought him in.”

She knows he’s right. But she also knows, or thinks she does, that Hunter is too smart to let himself be trapped by the police. “He won’t tell you anything,” she says. “This guy has flown under your radar before.”

“What makes you think he’ll open up to you?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “It’s personal.”

“What do you mean?”

She pulls at her jelly doughnut, tearing it into small pieces. Blue goo oozes over her fingers. “I’m Jennifer’s friend, we were both in his class…. It’s between the two of us, somehow.”

With a skeptical look, Gaffney says, “Excuse me for being blunt, Miss
Campbell, but it sounds like he’s got you just where he wants you. You think you’re special—that’s the first mistake.”

“I don’t think I’m special,” she says. “But I do have special access. And I think I can get him to tell me what he knows, or what he’s done.”

Gaffney puffs his cheeks full of air and slowly exhales.

“Listen,” she says, touching his arm. “He’s been living with some kind of secret for ten years. I think he wants to share it, but not with just anybody. It has to be somebody he thinks would understand.”

“And why is that you?”

She ponders this, absently biting her lip. Then she says, “Because he thinks I was jealous of her. He thinks I’m glad she’s gone.”

Gaffney shakes his head slowly. He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. “You’re in dangerous territory,” he says.

“I know.”

He looks at her for a long moment. “What do you want from me?” he asks.

“I need some advice,” she says. “I want to know what I have to do to trap him.”

“By which you mean …?”

“If he tells me what he did, would it hold up in court?”

“Maybe. It depends.”

“What if I got it on tape?”

“That would be better.”

“Could you hook me up with a body mike?”

“If it comes from the police, you’ll have to read him his Miranda rights first,” he says. “I’m guessing that might change the mood.”

“Yeah,” she says, considering this, rolling a piece of doughnut into a doughy ball. “What if I bring my own microcassette player, keep it in my bag?”

“You could. You’d be taking a risk. There’s an audible click; you have to turn over the tape. And if he finds it…. The last thing you want to do is enrage him.”

She nods.

“If you’re right, and he had anything to do with Miss Pelletier’s disappearance, this guy has a lot to lose—and he knows it. He may be dying to tell someone, but sooner or later his self-preservation instinct will kick in, and he’ll come to his senses. And if it’s too late, if he’s already told you, you may be in serious trouble.”

“I know.”

Gaffney sighs. “You’re determined to do this, aren’t you?”

“I want to find out what happened.”

He shakes his head. “This is not a game, Miss Campbell.”

“I know,” she says. Though her voice is resolute, her legs are trembling. She twines them around the cool metal pole and smiles at Gaffney. “I’ll be careful,” she says, but it’s only a formality, and neither of them believes it.

Chapter 31

D
ays go by with no word from Hunter. Kathryn begins to feel like a jilted lover, wondering what she said or did to scare him off. She finds herself checking her mother’s answering machine several times a day, driving through the high-school parking lot in search of his black Jeep, which isn’t there. She leaves her car doors unlocked, almost hoping he’ll put something on the seat. She looks up his name in the phone book and finds it—Hunter, Richard, at an address on Birch Lane—and she copies it onto a piece of paper. But instinctively she feels it would be wrong to call him. She doesn’t want to seem pushy; she’s afraid it would make him more suspicious than he already is. When he’s ready, she tells herself, he’ll be in touch.

Her mother is happy to hear that Kathryn’s foray into investigative reporting seems to be over. “I’m so glad you let that drop,” she says. “Your father and I both thought it was getting a little dicey.”

“You’ve talked to
Dad
about me?” Kathryn says, incredulous.

“Well, I was concerned about what you were getting into, so I called
him for advice. Turned out we were on the same page.” She smiles. “He can be very perceptive, you know.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”

Her mother shrugs lightly. “Before we were bitter enemies, remember, we used to be best friends.”

“No, I don’t remember,” Kathryn says pointedly.

When Jack proposes another story idea, a profile of an eccentric artist who lives on the coast and builds larger-than-life sculptures out of found materials, Kathryn takes the assignment. She drives down to Mount Desert Island one afternoon and interviews the woman in her Bass Harbor studio, then spends two hours walking through her sculpture garden on a sloping hill leading to the sea. The experience is magical; the massive figures, placed in a circle and facing each other, appear to be dancing in the mutable afternoon light.

Doing the story reminds Kathryn of what she used to love about covering the arts: The focus was on the work, not the person; the artists she interviewed were passionate about what they did, and that passion was contagious. She drives back to Bangor, to her mother’s office, to use the computer, finishing the story at one in the morning in a rush of adrenaline. For the first time in a long time she’s pleased with the work she’s done. The next day Jack proposes an interview with a band called Tidewater that’s being featured on the summer fair circuit, and she readily agrees. It’s better than sitting around.

At the end of the week, as Kathryn is backing out of the driveway on her way to Borders to pick up a Tidewater CD in preparation for the interview, she notices a piece of paper pinned under the windshield wiper. It’s folded in half, with her name neatly printed in block letters on the front. Opening it quickly, she looks around to see if anyone is watching, but no one’s in sight.

I’ve been thinking about you,
it reads in a small, vertical script—
about your idea that we articulate the complications. I’m not sure that’s wise. Regardless, I think we’re beginning to understand each other. I look forward to showing you how to find your way out of the woods.