Icarus. (41 page)

She had buzzed Leslee from downstairs. Identified herself as a friend of Kid's. Or maybe didn't even have to. Maybe Leslee was already in the tub, assumed that Jack had arrived early, hopped out to quickly press the buzzer, then dashed back to the bath. That made sense. He could picture that.

She got to the top of the stairs, saw the note – and the knife – that Leslee had left by the door. Went inside. Maybe she sat on the edge of the tub and talked to the girl, lulled her into a sense of ease. Was Leslee already shooting drugs? Maybe. Maybe this woman knew it. Maybe she knew it wouldn't be hard to get her going. All she had to do was up the dosage. Or maybe it was a struggle. Or maybe Leslee closed her eyes, relaxed in the warm water, and then here it came, a sudden jab, the syringe stuck in her arm, a quick thrashing and then…

Then what?

Then Jack buzzed. Leslee was already dead or certainly near death. The woman turned the water back on, a good distraction for when Jack arrived. She buzzed him in, stepping over Leslee's note – maybe dripping water on it, maybe that's how it got wet – and then she went up a flight of stairs, perhaps only half a flight. She might have watched him enter. When he closed the door, she went straight downstairs, out the front door to the street. She was gone. Safe.

Stopping first to jimmy the lock on the door? To break it after the fact?

Why? What purpose did that serve?

For one, it made him look like a liar. Or, worse, it made it seem as if he were the one who broke into the building.

It could make him look like the killer.

The elevator stopped now on Jack's floor. The door slid open and he stepped into his living room. His imagination was running away with him, he decided. Why would anyone want him to look like a murderer? For that matter, how would anyone even know he was involved?

Well, one person already knew. The Mortician. Eva Migliarini knew he was gathering information. She knew he was trying to find the other members of the Team. He could picture her talking to Leslee. She could easily have access to drugs. And he could see her pulling out the needle, sticking it into the naked girl, the girl who was compulsively cleansing off the world's stench in her bathwater.

Jack shook his head as if to clear away his overly dramatic ruminations. He went into the kitchen, took out a highball glass, then turned and went into the living room, straight for the bar, poured himself half a glassful of twelve-year-old single-malt scotch.

Forget all this, he told himself. You just had a shock. You saw a dead body. And not just a body, someone you knew, someone you'd heard so much about. It's natural to start imagining things. Christ! No wonder McCoy was looking at you like that. You must have sounded like an idiot. A paranoid idiot. So just forget it, drink your scotch and watch SportsCenter and forget about outsmarting the New York City Police Department.

Jack flicked on the TV, sat in his regular chair, got comfortable as he heard Dan Patrick say, "A slider to McGwire… and a whiffffff." As Jack sipped his drink, he glanced to his left, toward the Hopper painting, prepared to smile, as he always did when he saw it. Only this time he didn't smile. Because he didn't see it. The painting was gone.

Jack jumped up, the scotch swishing over the top of the glass and spilling onto his shirt. He took two steps over toward the bare wall, stopped suddenly, because he saw now that it was not gone. It had been taken off its hook on the wall. Someone had removed it, leaned it carefully against the baseboard. Jack ran to it, saw that it was unmarked and unharmed.

Someone had been in his apartment. But how? It was impossible to break into this building.

And even if someone could break in, why?

Why would anyone…

And then he knew.

His eyes went to the space on the wall where the painting had hung. In its place, in very small letters, two words had been carefully written. It looked like crayon, Jack thought. No. As he peered closer, more like red Magic Marker.

Jack ran back into the kitchen. Checked the walls and the cabinets. Everything was undisturbed. Then into his office. Normal. Next, he ran into his bedroom and what he saw there stopped him cold. There were three words, also in red Magic Marker, scrawled on the wall above his bed. The writing was neat, the lettering precise.

Jack realized he was breathing hard. And he was trembling. He went back to the living room, where the words were now all he could see. They dominated the room.

Stop looking is what they said.

He didn't have to go back into the bedroom to check the words there. The message was similar. The first two words were the same. But there was a third word added. And it was the third word that made Jack shiver and wonder what the hell he'd gotten himself into. And how he'd possibly get out of it.

He closed his eyes and could perfectly picture the message above his bed. In thick, precise, bloodred letters.

Stop looking now.

– "-"-"THE FIRST THING Jack did was call down to the doorman on duty.

"Carlos," he said into the phone that connected directly to the front door of the building, "did anyone come up to my apartment tonight?"

"No. Who?"

"I don't know. Anyone."

"No, sir."

"Can someone get into the apartment?"

"Not unless Frankie or I let 'em up."

"Tell me how you do that."

"What do you mean?"

"I know it sounds crazy, but tell me exactly how someone gets into my apartment."

"Are you kiddin'? You know how."

"Just humor me. How does someone get up here?"

"They come into the building, give their name, we call up for your okay, and whoever's at the door releases the elevator for your floor."

"There's a device at the door."

"Yeah, sure. Right under the stand, you know, when you come in."

"What if I'm not home?"

"If you're not here, we don't let anybody up. Unless you give us a written note with a name on it. Otherwise, ain't no way."

"Is someone always at the door? Could anyone get by you and release the elevator on his own?"

"Did someone get into your apartment, Mr. Keller? You want me to call-"

"No. Do me a favor and just answer the question."

"There's always two of us. Three or four shifts, always two at a time. Pretty hard to get by. I'd say impossible. And they'd have to know exactly how to release-"

"How about if you don't release it? Can someone get by you and just use the elevator?"

"No, sir. Well, they could, but they'd have to have a key."

"Like the one I use to come in through the garage?"

"Yes, sir. Same, exact key. You just insert it in the lock next to the button for your floor."

"And it only works for my floor?"

"Your key works for your floor, Mr. Babbitch's key works for the fifth floor, every tenant's got a key that works for them and them only."

"So my key won't work for Mr. Babbitch's floor?"

"That's right. What's goin' on, Mr. K?"

"How about the stairs?"

"To get up to you? Long climb."

"I know. But how do you do it?"

"Ain't you never climbed the stairs to your apartment?"

"No," Jack said, and he realized that after all these years he didn't even know exactly where the stairway entry was in the lobby. "How do you do it?"

"Gotta have a key for that, too. A key to get into the stairway from the lobby and a key to let you out when you get to your floor. Each floor has a different lock."

Jack hesitated. He didn't know what else to ask.

"You sure everything's okay, Mr. Keller?"

"Yeah, thanks, Carlos. Everything's fine."

He hung up and immediately called down to the garage. He went through a similar routine. No one there had seen anyone come in and use the elevator. No one who didn't belong, anyway. Pablo, the main guy at the garage, wouldn't swear that no one could get in without being seen but it was unlikely. And anyway, he said, nobody could get up to the apartments without having a key. It was impossible.

Jack tried to think who had keys to get into the place. He had one, of course, plus a duplicate set. As a reflex, he stuck his hand in his pocket to feel the key. It was right where it should be. He then went into the kitchen, to the small hook that hung by the refrigerator where the spare was kept. It was there, too. In fact, two spares were there, which puzzled him for a moment, then he realized he had a third set. Caroline's keys had been returned to him, along with her other possessions from Virginia.

Who else? Dom had one and his name had also been left downstairs as someone who could be let in anytime. If anyone was above suspicion, it was Dom. Mattie had had a key and her name had also been left downstairs. But poor Mattie was dead and, even if she were alive, could never have done anything remotely like Jack realized now that there was some kind of commotion out on the street. Strange. Usually you couldn't hear the traffic up this high, but there was frantic honking. Must be some kind of an accident. Jack instinctively turned toward the balcony, at the same time felt a small blast of hot, summer air, and that's when he realized the sliding door was open. No, not just open…

Someone had broken it.

A small section of the large glass pane had been shattered. Right by the handle. And the door had been left open. Maybe six inches.

Jack walked slowly over to it. He stared down at the shards that were gleaming in the carpet. Looked back up at the jagged hole. Then he looked out across the balcony, at the wall that stretched over to the next building.

No one had needed a key to get into his apartment.

Someone had walked across the wall. The ten-foot-long, one-foot-wide wall. Eighteen stories above the street.

Jack remembered Kid, not long before his death, leaping up onto the retaining wall and walking.

Hey, do you know you could actually walk to the next building from here?

Jack remembered his stomach tightening.

Seriously. The buildings are connected.

He remembered his mouth going dry. He remembered getting dizzy…

Someone could walk along this ledge and get to that rooftop. You'd have to be kind of nuts but…

Jack slid the balcony door shut, hard enough so more glass cracked and showered to the floor. He stood there, sagging a bit, holding on to the handle for support, still staring out at the nearby rooftop. No longer just wondering who had killed Kid. No longer wondering who had killed Leslee.

Now wondering if that same person was going to try to kill him.

Jack took one step toward the phone. He was going to call McCoy. Get her over here, let her see this, make her understand what was going on and let her protect him. Then he thought: No. She still won't understand. And cops don't protect, they react. She'll tell me to get a new door. And an alarm. She'll ask me if I did all this myself just to make her think I was right.

Fuck McCoy, he thought.

And fuck whoever did this.

I'm not going to stop looking. I'm going to find her. And I'm going to find her now.

By three o'clock the next afternoon, the glass door had been replaced, an alarm system installed – the installer muttering, over and over again, "Who'd be crazy enough to try to break in from here?" – and a painter was at work on the living room and bedroom wall.

And Jack had spent just over three hours sitting in front of his computer, trying to find the Rookie.

She was the logical one to go after, partly because Jack suspected she had, over time, metamorphosed into the Destination, and partly because he had remembered back to winter, about two weeks into January. He remembered so specifically because it was the first day Kid had seen the Hopper painting. After checking the day he'd gotten the painting, then using his calendar to pinpoint his first session with Kid after that, it was not difficult to specify the exact day – January 17.

Jack could recall the conversation as if it were yesterday.

I regard Edward Hopper as the depressive's Norman Rockwell.

What!

Jack, I don't know shit about art. I'm just quoting.

A member of your fucking team?

The Rookie. She has very strong feelings about art.

Do me a favor and tell her to go fuck herself.

You don't want to mess with her, Jack. Not with what I've learned about her.

Your goddamn team. I don't think they even exist.

They exist, all right. Hey, the Rookie was even written up in yesterday's Times. She's famous.

He was annoyed as hell at the time, even hurt, but the words had still been mere banter then. Now they seemed so much more. The Rookie has very strong feelings about art. And clearly did not like Hopper. If the Rookie had been the one to break into his apartment the night before, was that why the Hopper had been removed from the wall? You don't want to mess with her, Jack. Not with what I've learned about her. Because she was so dangerous? Because she was capable of killing? And best of all: The Rookie was even written up in yesterday's Times. She's famous.

A starting point.

Using AOL, he went to nytimes.com. At the web site, he registered, typed in a password – "jacks" – and as various choices came up, he elected to go back into their selected archives. He typed in "January 16" and, suddenly, there was that day's newspaper of record up on the screen. He decided there was only one way to do this and that was thoroughly, so he began reading the paper from cover to cover. As he read, he took notes, keeping track of any woman being written about who conceivably could have had a connection to Kid or who could, in any stretch of the imagination, have been on the Team. After a few minutes of reading, he realized he should keep track of every single woman mentioned, just in case he needed to backtrack. So on a yellow legal pad, as he went through each section – front page, Metro, The Arts, Sports, Business Day and Dining In – he started dividing the names into three columns labeled Likely, Less Likely, and Unlikely. With each name, he jotted down any relevant information – a brief description, a job title, a company name or the name of an agent, anything that might help him locate her.