Critical Space (15 page)

"Right," she said. "Which of you is going to tell me about my stalker, then?"

"I've spent the last twelve years becoming very adept at listening to what people are saying behind my back," Lady Ainsley-Hunter said. "It's the world I was born and bred to. It's a required survival skill in a class-based society."

She was seated on the edge of her bed, pulling on a pair of white cotton socks that looked stunningly inappropriate. I'd taken the seat by the dressing table, and we were alone for the time being, the others waiting in the sitting room for the second round of breakfast -- this for Her Ladyship and Natalie -- to arrive.

"Neither you nor Robert want me to fret over something I cannot control. I suppose I could be offended or outraged or otherwise angry, and I am, a bit."

"You're concealing it well."

"Another trait I had to learn early." She finished tugging up her socks, then grabbed a foot in each hand and pulled them in against her thighs, rocking slightly on the mattress. "Is this man dangerous?"

"Possibly."

She pursed her lips and blew out a breath. Then she shrugged. "Very well."

"That's the most understated response I've ever heard from a principal."

"You don't know very much about the peerage, do you?"

"Not really."

"The women I grew up with, went to school with, the ones who are my age, they think I'm pitiful. As in, deserving of their pity."

The look I gave her made her laugh. It sounded bitter.

"Ninety percent of those women are anorexic or suffering from some other eating disorder," Lady Ainsley-Hunter said. "Everything is about appearance, about station, about finding a good husband. These are women who spend their whole year preparing for the Season, choosing what they will wear, who they will invite, who they will deign to speak to."

"It's that shallow?" I asked.

"It's not shallow at all, if you're a part of it. It's the culture." She let her feet go and reached down for the pair of black boots at the foot of the bed. "When I was nine years old, I went with my father to Thailand. He was with the Foreign Office then, going on a fact-finding tour, and I begged and begged to go with him. On that trip, I met a little Thai girl, my age, perhaps a year or two older. She was quite sweet, quite kind to me. She and I played by the pool at the hotel. She wore a black bathing suit, and I thought it was quite adult, because it didn't have frills or ruffles.

"One afternoon, while we were playing, two men came over, one of them Thai, the other I'm not certain about, but he was Caucasian. I thought the Thai man was my friend's father. And my friend left with them, and I stayed in the pool."

She paused, yanking the right boot on and then smoothing her pants leg down over it. "You know how when you're little you can occupy yourself with a pleasure for hours and hours? You can play with the same toy, you can read the same book again and again?"

I nodded.

"Growing up in the north of England, not really weather for taking a dip," she reached for her other boot, "one does not swim for fun. Only if one has fallen into the lake. I was in and out of that pool for hours. So I was there when she returned. She was happy to see me, she jumped into the water, wanting to play.

"As soon as she was in the water, though, blood began clouding around her middle. She'd been bleeding between her legs, you see, and the bathing suit, being black, had hidden it. But in the water, it sort of... billowed out. As soon as she saw it, she started to cry."

She looked at the remaining boot, still in her hand.

"The pool attendant came and pulled her from the water. I thought that he would call for a doctor, but he didn't, he began shouting at her. And the man that I thought was her father, he came running back, too. The two men started shouting at one another, my friend between them. The attendant was shaking her, and the water from her suit made the blood run down her legs. She kept crying the whole time.

"Then they left, or, more precisely, they were forced to leave. The man who I believed was her father -- he was dragging her after him. He didn't seem like a very kind parent, I remember thinking.

"My own father arrived, and I told him what I'd seen. I wanted to know where my friend had gone, you see. I was going to be at the hotel, at the pool, for another three or four days, and I wanted to have someone to play with. My father went to talk to the pool attendant, and when he came back he looked as if he'd swallowed something both sour and sharp at once, as if it was in his stomach, making him ill."

Lady Ainsley-Hunter finished pulling on the remaining boot, then stood, stamping each foot to make sure she was set on her heels. With the back of her hand, she smoothed her hair.

"I badgered him, asking over and over what had happened, where she had gone. Asking if I could play with her again. I'm old enough now that I understand how hard it was for him, but then, I thought he was just being cruel, and I wouldn't relent. In the end, he sat me down and he said that I wasn't going to see her again. And I asked why, I asked if that meant she was sick, if she had died. After all, I'd seen her bleeding.

"My father was a reserved man, you understand. He could be quite passionate when it suited him, but he rarely revealed his emotions. But I saw tears in his eyes, and he held me close, and he told me that there were evil things, and that the worst evils were the evils done to children.

"And then he explained what evil I had just seen."

Outside, I heard the doorbell ring. Lady Ainsley-Hunter canted her head in the direction of the sound, listening. There was the rattle of a new cart being wheeled in, the old one being wheeled away. She sighed, checking herself in the mirror, finding me in the reflection. There was the hint of a self-mocking smile.

"I can't think of any work more important than what I do," she told my reflection. "I suppose some might think that arrogant, but I genuinely believe that there is nothing more important in the world than rescuing children. I have dedicated my life to a cause. I will never abandon it."

She finished checking herself in the mirror, then turned to face me.

"This man Keith, he worries you and he worries Robert. As far as I'm concerned, all that it means is that the money I'm spending on security is worth every pence. But Keith doesn't matter to me. He is, in all honesty, irrelevant. I have more important things to deal with..." She trailed off, searching my face for some sign that I understood what she was saying and why she was saying it.

"All right," I said.

She nodded, taking her suit jacket from where it hung at the back of a chair. It was made from the same light silk as her trousers, the same green.

"And now I want my breakfast," she said.

The producer
of Talk New York!
was a man named Jordan Palmetto, and he met us in the dressing room when we arrived at the studio. He waited, patient and visibly amused, until Moore and I had finished our checks, then greeted Lady Ainsley-Hunter and tried to present her with a basket of fruit and cheese. Moore took it from him before Lady Ainsley-Hunter could, grinning and saying that he was starved. It was a more discreet -- though ruder -- way of indicating that he wanted to check the contents before handing it over.

Once she was seated at the makeup table, Palmetto began running through questions with Her Ladyship, Chester sitting with them. Her Ladyship was going to be the first guest. The other guests today were a stand-up comedian who had a new sitcom that had debuted this fall, and an author.

"But nobody's ever heard of him," Palmetto confided. "If it looks like we're going long, we'll bump him."

"What does he write?" Lady Ainsley-Hunter asked.

"Books," Palmetto said.

I took a post near the door to the dressing room while Moore headed back out to make a circuit of the stage area. Over my radio I listened as Natalie and he exchanged transmissions about the layout and the look of the audience. Dale was out back, keeping an eye on the two cars and the exit, and Corry was waiting in the lobby, in position to watch as people began filing inside. The studio had two hundred and twenty-eight seats, and all of them would be filled, though whether the seats were occupied by people who actually wanted to see the show or by people who were pulled in off the street was hard to tell.

"I'm going to talk to the square badges once more, "
Natalie radioed.
"Make certain they know how to use the copies of the handout."

We all radioed back confirmations.

"Doors open in five minutes, "
Corry said.

Again, we radioed confirmations.

Palmetto finished with Her Ladyship, and it seemed to have gone well, because he left her laughing, then stopped to speak with me before leaving the room.

"Kodiak, right?" he asked, offering me his hand.

"Right," I said, trying to decide what to do with the potential shake. If I took it, one of my hands would be busy. If I didn't, I'd be rude. I decided it was safe enough in the room to be polite. "Nice to meet you."

"Hey, it's my pleasure." He smiled at me the same way he had at Lady Ainsley-Hunter. "Listen, you and your colleagues, you ought to do the show sometime, maybe next week, what do you think? We could do the whole hour with you guys, talk about your job, the work, Skye Van Brandt, stuff like that. We could even get that other writer, the journalist with the book. What do you think?"

"We're busy through the month," I said.

The soothe-the-celebrity smile didn't falter. "No problem. Tell you what, leave me a card or something, we'll get in touch, work it out."

"I'll do that," I lied.

He offered his hand again, and because I'd accepted the first time, I was obligated to once more. Then he went out into the hall, and I shut the door, turned back to see Lady Ainsley-Hunter saying something to Chester and the woman who was touching up her hair; both laughed. The hairdresser was gray-haired, very thin, and kept a long cigarette parked behind her ear.

"Tinkerbell, "
Dale said over the radio.
"Two of the Lost Boys are here to see you."

"Stand by," I said. "Hook, check six."

"Check six, confirmed, "
Moore said.
"Be about a minute."

Both Chester and Her Ladyship glanced my way.

"Nothing serious," I told them. "Moore's going to spell me here. I've got to step out for a second."

"Check six?" Chester asked.

"It's a sneaky way of saying 'I need to step outside,' " I said. "Keeps anyone listening from knowing what we're up to."

The hairdresser finished what she was doing and I let her out of the dressing room as Moore arrived. He took over my post, and I went down the long hallway to the back door, passing two security guards along the way. I stopped long enough to make certain both had the handout, asking them to each show me theirs, and they glared at me.

"We know who we're looking for," the younger of the two said. "We've been doing this for a while."

"Prove it to me," I said.

"Just because we're not famous doesn't mean we don't know how to do our jobs," the other one complained. He had the shoulders and upper arms of a person who has spent too much time lifting weights to the neglect of everything below the waist and, apparently, above the neck.

I smiled at the two of them, thanked them for their help, and continued out the back. Bridgett and Fowler were there, standing with Dale by the parked cars. Bridgett frowned when she saw me.

"You're ill," she said.

"And now cranky," I said. "Dale, get inside and have the two guards in the hall replaced with another set, please. They've got an attitude problem."

Dale rolled his shoulders and pretended to crack his knuckles, as if preparing to hand out a beating. "Me go be mean now," he said.

I turned back to Bridgett and Scott. "Keith's not in Newark?"

"We tracked him to a Best Western in Nyack," Fowler said. "He was there last night, checked out this morning. We missed him by maybe an hour. Got a positive visual I.D., but nothing on his transportation and no idea where he went next. He didn't make any calls and he didn't leave anything behind."

"But you two are here," I said.

Bridgett put the back of her right hand to my forehead, and I moved my head back, irritated. "You've got a fever."

"I feel fine. Why are you two here?"

"Because there's a chance Keith's coming here," Bridgett said, squinting at me, as if trying to see the virus clambering about in my bloodstream. "And we don't know where else to look."

"And we're both fans of the show," Scott said. "Where do you want us?"

"If you'd like to head around the front and meet up with Corry, two extra pairs of eyes couldn't hurt."

The door behind us opened and Dale emerged, grinning. "Taken care of," he reported. "I talked to Palmetto, he moved Heckle and Jeckle to the fire exits in the studio."

I nodded, then radioed Corry to tell him that the Lost Boys would be coming around to join him. All posts radioed back a confirmation, and Scott and Bridgett followed me back inside. A new guard was in the hall, and before we had even reached him, he had produced his copy of the handout and held it up for me to see.

"Thank you," I said.

The guard grunted.

When we reached the dressing room Scott and Bridgett kept going, but not before Bridgett stopped long enough to squeeze my hand and give me another kiss.

"Midge wanted to know if we're still friends," I told her.

"We're still friends."

"I'm asking for her sake more than my own."

"That perky bitch wants into your pants. If I sleep at your place tonight, I'll shoot her."

"How do you know she's after me? Maybe she's hoping you're available."

"The only thing that isn't straight about that woman is her perm," Bridgett said.

At oh-nine-hundred, Natalie came on the net to let us know that the house doors were being opened. I passed the news along to Her Ladyship, and we all settled in to wait. After fifteen minutes, the stage manager came back to check on us, saying that if Her Ladyship wished to move backstage, that would be fine.