Nightlife (33 page)

She could see the sky through the greenhouse windows across the room at the front of the house, but there were flames moving along the walls on both sides of the room. The only windows still free of flames were the greenhouse windows, and they didn’t open. Catherine rose to a crouch and rushed to the dining room table. She lifted one of the chairs and swung it hard into the greenhouse window. There was a crash and a spray of glass, and she pushed the chair the rest of the way out.

She wrapped the tablecloth around her right hand and forearm, used it to clear the glass shards from the bottom of the window, draped it over the sill to protect her while she put her feet out, then slid her body out after them and held herself there. She extended her arms, looked down, then dropped.

44

J
udith Nathan’s alarm clock gave an insistent buzz. She reached across the pillow to turn it off, and sat up in bed. She had been asleep for barely two hours, but she had wanted to be awake at six. She walked out into her living room, turned on the television set, sat in front of it, and waited.

The local morning news began with a lot of oppressively energetic music, quick cuts of cars on highways, shots of office buildings downtown, and idealized stills of the couple who read the news.

The man said, “Good morning. Our top story this hour is an arson fire in the Adair Hill district that’s linked to a murder.” Judith stood up, the excitement building. Had she caught Catherine Hobbes in the fire? “Our Dave Turner was live on the scene with police lieutenant Joyce Billings this morning.”

The image changed to a shot of a woman in her fifties wearing an uncomfortable-looking blue police uniform who frowned at a hand that thrust a microphone into her face. She said, “The fire at the house is now out. The firefighters say that the house will be a total loss, but they were able to contain the fire and limit it to the one building. Fire department investigators have already declared it an arson fire. There is conclusive evidence that accelerants were used.”

The voice of the man holding the microphone said, “Is it true that this was a police officer’s house?”

“Yes, it was. This happens to be an officer who has been involved in a number of high-profile cases during the past few months. We don’t know whether this has to do with one of those cases or not.”

“What can you tell us about the shooting?”

“At approximately three
A.M.
there were calls to report both the fire and, about a block from here, gunshots. The fire trucks arrived first, to find the street blocked by what appeared at first to be a disabled car. Firefighters got down to push the car out of the street and found a Caucasian male about forty years old lying nearby. A gun was found beside him. We believe that he was killed during a shoot-out with an unknown assailant. We won’t release his name until after his family has been notified.”

“Was he a suspect?”

“No,” said the lieutenant. “He was not a suspect in the investigation.” She turned away, and the camera panned quickly from the microphone up the arm to the face of the young male reporter who had been asking the questions. Behind him Judith could see Calvin Dunn’s car, which was now pushed to the curb. There were cops milling around measuring things with long tape measures and talking. Among them was a shorter, possibly female figure in black clothes.

“This is Dave Turner, live for KALP News . . .” Judith kept her eyes on the figure in black. It was definitely a woman, but maybe only a curious neighbor. “. . . coming to you from the scene of a very mysterious fire.” He gave his serious look, and the woman behind him turned to say something to someone. It was Catherine Hobbes.

“Shit!” said Judith Nathan. “How did you get out of there, you bitch?” Catherine Hobbes disappeared and the scene changed to the studio, where the news couple sat behind their desk. It didn’t matter. Judith knew how Catherine Hobbes had survived. She had been afraid of it since the moment it had happened. It had been the shots. It had been that stupid Calvin Dunn.

He must have been sitting in his car somewhere above Catherine’s house, waiting. She had walked past the house on several evenings before, but he had not been there. He must have known that Judith would come for Catherine late at night, when she was in her deepest sleep. Of course Judith would do it then. Catherine Hobbes was an armed cop, and she spent all of her days surrounded by other armed cops.

He probably had not seen Judith arrive. She had not seen his car, so probably it had been parked beyond the curve, where Catherine wouldn’t see it either. But he had seen the fire. He had driven down the hill and seen Judith come away from the house in a hurry, and he had seen her running. The only thing all night that he had not seen in time was where Judith had carried her gun. He had thought she had it in her backpack.

Judith switched channels, going to each of the local stations to hear their versions of the same story. Some of them showed the same police spokeswoman from slightly different angles, and some had video clips of the burning house and the firemen.

At least Judith had shown Catherine what it felt like to be hunted. She had wanted her to know what it was like to be alone and afraid, to have to run for her life. She supposed that she had accomplished that much. It was a good start.

45

C
atherine Hobbes hurried into the department store with the envelope full of cash. All of her identification, her checkbook, and her credit cards had been incinerated with her purse when the house had burned. The money she had now was from the bureau’s cash fund for emergencies. It had taken the captain’s written approval to get the loan.

She was still wearing her black silk pants and peacoat. Abby Stern, one of the other female detectives, always kept a spare blouse in the office, and she had let Catherine borrow it.

Catherine could have gone to her parents, both for the money and the temporary clothes. But she had been busy with the firefighters and the police investigators, and had barely had time to call her parents at seven to tell them about the fire before they saw it on television. She supposed it had been more a question of efficiency than actual time. She knew that her mother would insist on having her stay with them, and she knew that she didn’t want to. There would be an argument, and her father would eventually reassert his ancient authority to make her stop arguing with her mother. That was something that could happen only if she did exactly as her mother said. The only way to avoid it was to rent an apartment somewhere before she allowed the discussion to begin.

She held a patrolman’s radio in her hand as she shopped, because her cell phone had burned with everything else, and she needed to stay in touch with the bureau while the hunt for Tanya was on.

Catherine picked out some underwear and three outfits that she could wear to work. The requirements were that there be a coat that was slightly oversized so it would hide the gun she sometimes wore under it, and that the pants would allow her to run or fight if she had to. Beyond that, the outfit had to be fashionable enough so that she would not stand out in a crowd. The last purchase was the two pairs of shoes. They took longer than the suits, but she was finished quickly.

As she hurried toward the door of the department store, she decided the shopping trip hadn’t been bad. When she had bought her first uniform in the academy, it had come as a shock to her that the uniforms were still all cut for men, and that the regulation shoes came only in men’s sizes. When she had put on her first bulletproof vest she had learned that they weren’t for women either, and wearing one loose was not a good idea.

She supposed she was still feeling a bit traumatized. Last night she had been absolutely terrified, and being afraid was never a good experience for her. It weakened her and reminded her that she wasn’t what she wanted to be. Being burned out of her house was also a great deal of work, and it all came at a time when she needed to be doing her job. Tanya had been in Portland last night, trying to kill her. This was Catherine’s chance to get her.

As she reached her unmarked car, she realized that the loss of her house had been a good mental exercise for her. She had suddenly been deprived of all the papers that the average person collected over a lifetime, and it had reminded her of how important they were. She had been unable to get money from her own bank account, unable to buy anything to wear, unable to rent a room to sleep in. Technically, she had driven over to the mall illegally, because she was not carrying a driver’s license.

Tanya Starling had been traveling the country for months under a half dozen different names. She had been buying and selling cars, opening and closing bank accounts, signing leases, and she had done all of it without raising much suspicion. Catherine had known since she had become a police officer that the average person didn’t really take a close look at anyone else’s identification. They just glanced at the photograph, at most read the name, and accepted it, as long as nothing else made them suspicious. Tanya seemed to be getting better and better at making people trust her. She seemed to be immune to the nervousness that made people sense that something was wrong.

She was learning quickly, and that was frightening. Learning was one of the things some of the worst serial killers did. They got more efficient and expert at committing their crimes—did the things that mattered, and stopped doing the things that were useless and could get them caught—and the chances of catching them declined. As that happened, they seemed to lose restraint.

Their cruelty to victims wasn’t personal; it was detached, almost scientific. They studied their victims’ reactions and their own, and as their studies progressed, the cruelty became more pronounced. A few months ago, Tanya had pulled a trigger and shot Dennis Poole in the back of the head. She had given him the easiest way to die—no fear, no time for the pain to reach the consciousness before the brain was obliterated. Last night she had tried to burn Catherine to death.

When Catherine arrived at the office, she saw that the first of the phone messages on her desk was from Joe Pitt, but she didn’t have time to call him now. She had to work on Tanya’s photographs. The one thing she had done that had shown any effect was to circulate Tanya’s picture. Tanya had been recognized at least once in Flagstaff, and in Los Angeles before that. She needed to get the pictures out, and to be sure that the television stations that were running tapes of her house burning on the noon news would also show Tanya’s photograph.

Catherine went to work preparing another set of circulars with the pictures of Tanya and the pictures of Rachel Sturbridge. This time, to the list of suspected crimes, she added arson and the shooting of Calvin Dunn. As she studied her computer screen, trying to make the pictures as large as possible, she became aware that someone was behind her. She turned, and saw the captain. “Hi, Captain.”

“Hobbes. My office.”

She saved the image and followed him to the big office at the end of the hall, then sat on the couch across from his desk where his visitors sat. He said, “I see you got some clothes with the emergency fund. Is there anything else you need?”

“I’ve ordered duplicates of all my papers. I’ve requested a new weapon and a new ID and badge. Nothing will come for a day or two.”

He picked up the phone, looked at a list of numbers taped to the desk beside it, and dialed an extension. “This is Captain Farber in homicide. I have an officer here who had her house burn down last night in an attempt on her life. Right. Catherine Hobbes. I need to have her working cases, so I would like a new sidearm, badge, and identification card for her as of ten minutes ago. Can you possibly speed that up for me? Thanks. It’s much appreciated.” He hung up. “They’ll bring it all to you in an hour. Who torched your house?”

“Tanya Starling.”

“Not the guy who stuffed his wife in the trunk of his car?”

“John Olson? No. He’s been denied bail, and he’s a solitary nut with no chance of getting any money to pay anyone else to kill me. This was Tanya Starling. She is—or was—in Portland.”

“Based on what?”

“I gave my business card to her landlady in San Francisco, and she gave my numbers to Tanya. She’s used both my cell number and my home number to call me. I guess she converted the home number to an address. It’s not hard. Anyone can do it on the Internet. Then there’s the arson. The fire department investigators tell me it amounted to soaking the outside of my house with barbecue fire starter and lighting it up with a book of paper matches. She hasn’t done any fires before. If it had been a professional there would be a timing device so he could have been a hundred miles away when the fire started, or it would have been set up to look like an accident.”

“Do I need to say that’s inconclusive?”

“There will be more. I think Calvin Dunn is the best evidence for the moment.”

“What about him?”

“I was in the interrogation after he killed Tyler Gilman. Dunn said that he had been watching my hotel that night because he thought Tanya would show up to kill me. When somebody started firing at my car with a rifle, Dunn went after the shooter.”

“So?”

“He went after the shooter because he assumed it was Tanya. He was hired to get her, and not to save me, so he didn’t try. He didn’t do anything to help me get to cover, and he didn’t return fire to keep the sniper’s head down. He didn’t call the police. He wanted the rifle shots to continue as long as possible, so he could spot where the sniper was and get to her. Last night, I’m pretty sure he did the same thing. He saw that my house was on fire, so he drove off trying to find her.”

“If that’s true, then he should have succeeded. Have any idea how she killed him?”

“I might. It’s possible that he saw the fire, then saw a woman running from it. He couldn’t be sure it wasn’t me. Maybe he hesitated to be sure he wasn’t shooting the wrong woman, and she got him first. Or maybe he saw who she was but didn’t know she had brought a gun on a trip to set a fire.”

“I’m not sure I’m buying this.”

“The point is, if anybody but Tanya—anybody at all—had burned me to death in my sleep, he would not have gone after them.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“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 assigned 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.”