The Hidden Man (20 page)

God, how her publishers loved the whole plan! Perfectly set up, all she had to do was hang back in her Hospitality League position and allow the natural course of things to generate a story that she would access from the inside—perhaps even become a part of, herself. (She had not decided whether to use her own name for her character, too much fame being destructive for an author, after all.)

Everyone in New York understood that with such brilliantly structured conflict, her inside position would certainly yield a whopping good story. When the crimes that she anonymously helped to manifest finally took place, all of the breathless newspaper articles would only serve to whet public appetite for her book’s in-depth details. After this one hit the bookstands, nobody would ever trap her in the “Women’s Romance Writer” category, ever again.

Everything caught up with her too soon, that was all. Before she had the chance to complete her mission, the chain of events somehow boomeranged back down all the days and weeks since then, ending with the constricting pressure on both sides of her neck, forcefully applied just beneath her chin.

She had almost escaped it, at first. She even managed to keep herself beautifully alive throughout the initial attack, which came upon her without warning inside the pavilion. It was stunningly powerful, a large hand whipping around from behind her, clamping vicelike over her mouth. One moment she was trying to think of the most hurtful remark that she could to hurl at Vignette’s departing form—the next, she was speechless, barely able to breathe, pinned by the powerful man’s second arm, then lifted just high enough that her feet would not touch the ground.

As quickly as that, all power was taken from her. Her wiles did their best for her; she immediately relaxed, sensing that resistance would only aggravate her attacker. She went limp and allowed him to carry her out of the pavilion and across the Zone, which was deserted at this late hour. Her attacker bore her into an isolated group of low bushes that had a small clearing hidden in the middle, and plopped her down onto the ground. She wisely ignored squealing in pain and shock, knowing that this might aggravate him also. Instead, she tried to turn and meet his eyes. If she could somehow connect with him, she would be able to do something. Janine Freshell could always do something when she locked eyes with a man.

There was no way to turn her head. The pressure of his grip did not ease.

In response, she kept her body perfectly limp and offered no resistance of any kind. She slowly reached her right arm across to her opposite shoulder, then lightly caressed the top of his hand with her fingertips.

The effect was immediate and gave her a moment’s hope. Whoever he was, he obviously had not predicted a seductive reaction. His grip dropped to half its strength.

Miss Freshell knew by now that this was no robbery. Her attacker showed no interest in her purse or her pockets. Could it only be sex? She wondered. Could
that
be all? Some stinking, penis-bearing shit sack was willing to risk kidnapping her and then raping her in this public place? Whoever this man was, he had to know that he would be shot on the spot if someone saw him, or that if he went to prison for rape, he would die there.

But she also knew that half of the world’s population were morons and that you could always identify one by checking for a penis. So she continued the caressing motion and writhed her hips under him. The message was easy to convey.
Here I am, I’m your little victim. Feel me? Feel what you have trapped underneath you?

That was the moment when his hand dropped from her mouth to her throat, squeezing with such awful force that all her thoughts left her, replaced by a fireball of panic. It filled her awareness to the point that she had no knowledge of when she began dying, or even when she finished. Her last coherent thought was that it felt as if she were strangling herself and could not stop.

She lost consciousness from the cutoff of blood to the brain before she had the chance to pass out for lack of air, meaning that her death was relatively painless. Janine Freshell would have also approved of that, given the circumstances. And since her new opus was never going to be completed now, she might have been willing to stoop to remaining within her romantic fiction territory if she could only be granted the opportunity to write a passage about her own demise.

The realities of spasmodic death would never appear on such pages: the panicked voiding of her bladder first, then a massive evacuation of her bowels when her instincts did their last bit of misguided service by lightening up her body, preparing her to flee. But the only flight left to Miss Freshell was, perhaps, the spirit from the body. The body itself would never travel again.

Panic occupied her while the hand crushed her larynx, shutting down the arteries. The panic only faded as her life faded, and still the grip on her neck was strong and determined. Before long, there was nothing left of Miss Janine Freshell whatsoever, except for an empty carcass, a stomach-wrenching odor, and all the lethal chaos that she had set into motion during her truncated life.

SIMULTANEOUSLY

THE PANAMA-PACIFIC INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION

V
IGNETTE STOOD FROZEN BEHIND
the door to the women’s restroom for a full minute, listening. It felt like half an hour, but still there were no sounds from the other side. She had just finished deliberately rebraiding her hair and was considering coming back out again, when her very bone marrow seemed to grasp the fact that she had heard nothing out there for all this time. She figured that the running tap water might have drowned out a little of it, but some trace of noise ought to have filtered through.

Her blood ran cold. She had gotten careless. She became so busy with her little game that she forgot to listen and keep track of the cleanup noises outside.

The time spent behind the door straining her hearing was terrifying, even though she did not consciously know why. When she finally opened it, she eased it forward by millimeters, peering out through the vertical crack.

Nothing. She smoothly widened the crack—still nothing. At last she slowly and steadily pushed the door back, just far enough to slip her head out for a peek…

Not only was there nothing there, but nothing at all had been done to finish up. No wonder it was so quiet. Her first reaction was annoyance, since the Eastern Whore had obviously gotten her bloomers bunched up and trumped Vignette’s exit to the restroom by walking out on the job.

Vignette stomped out into the center of the pavilion and slowly turned in a full circle. Unbelievable. Unless she was prepared to raise the ante by going home now herself, leaving the job undone, she was stuck. It was tempting to do exactly that, except that the aftereffects could go more to Randall than to Miss Freshell.

It was interesting, she thought, that this childish display revealed how much the Eastern Whore truly thought of the Ladies’ Hospitality League, in failing to leave the place ready for the cleaning crew and risking embarrassment to them all. Freshell was the one who always complained to Vignette about how the male park managers were always waiting for the all-women’s group to mess things up. They could howl about such mistakes for days because it made them feel smarter.

Nobody had to warn her about that. Such awareness came right out of her own experience. Women were never supposed to look too good in any business environment. If they did, people started to talk about how it was that this woman may have accomplished so much, what she might have done to get there, that sort of thing. Gossipmongers ruined lives.

It took her over half an hour to get things put away and push back all the little brochure tables so that the sweepers had clear room. She found herself putting extra energy into it for no other reason than that it made her feel angry to picture anyone saying that the women could not even manage their own working space at the fairgrounds.

By the time it was all done and she closed the main door behind her, leaving it unlocked for the cleaners as instructed, she was feeling glad that Miss Freshell had abandoned her in such a crude way. Maybe when Randall heard about it he would shake off whatever spell she had him under and give the woman a second look.

She walked out into the deserted Zone and headed toward the main gates. It was a brisk ten-minute walk for average people, and Vignette could take it at an easy trot in a third of that time. It felt good to break out of the Gibson Girl mode, and she smoothly trotted along on the balls of her feet, so that the shoe heels stayed out of her way. There was nobody around to stare, except for a few straggling workers closing up. She stretched her stride and deepened her breathing.

The long skirt was of a thin wool, but still cumbersome enough to be a drag on her efforts. She grabbed up the front with both hands and let the rest drape off to the sides. She had only covered the first couple of blocks when she came to a small alley cutting across the sidewalk. Surprise stopped her cold at the sight of a full-sized female mannequin that somebody had left sprawled on the bricks just inside the alleyway.

The top half of the female form was concealed by the building’s moon shadow, but Vignette could see the rest of it clearly enough: standard black leather high-buttoned, low-heeled shoes, the long ankle skirt of the same dark blue or black that all the women wore. This one had a simple slip, pulled up to reveal the dark stocking on one leg.

Such an elaborate mannequin. Somebody had to have been pretty damned careless to have lost it.

Vignette ignored a flash of dread. Instead, she managed to spend another few seconds in the relative comfort of ignorance by asking herself what the poor person who lost this mannequin was going to do. Vignette wondered if she should tell someone about it. Hell, she was only a volunteer, and had not volunteered to be on mannequin-chasing duty. Somebody who was on the clock ought to figure out—

Comfortable ignorance ended. She arrived at the sprawled “mannequin” with a part of her already recognizing the outfit. For a fraction of a second, she tried to remark to herself upon the similarity of the mannequin’s clothing to that of Miss Freshell.

But by then she was close enough to see into the dark slash of the building’s shadow. Miss Freshell’s dying horror was perfectly captured, frozen upon her face in a nasty shade of bluish gray. The eyes were wide open and fixed straight ahead, so that they happened to be staring directly up at Vignette. The impact of the image hit her like a tree branch across the face. She froze to the spot, bending her knees and gasping for air.

She knew better than to assume the killer was gone; this crime had to have just taken place. She scanned the shadows for threats, for any movement. Her anxiety caused the ground to begin swimming beneath her. She pushed her breathing into its deepest and most forceful mode while she checked in all directions for a possible attacker.

Once she was satisfied that no one was about to pounce, she turned her focus outward, for someone to call for help. There was no need to check for a pulse. Death had laid its brand upon Janine Freshell and burned it in deep.

She’s in God’s hands,
Vignette thought,
if you follow that sort of thing.

She had to find a beat cop or at least see about a public telephone to ring up the police. Although she knew that the first thing Randall would want her to do was get away from there, she pulled off her medium-weight waistcoat and stepped close enough to the body to waft it down over the face and head. There was no other way to show the dead woman any respect or to protect the scene.

Her linen long-sleeved blouse offered scant protection against the brisk snap to the air, so she gathered her skirt in her hands again and started directly for the main gate, where there would always be a guard. She kept her speed lower than an open sprint, but her stride was still deep and fast enough to cover ground in a hurry. She poured her shock into the exertion.

Somewhere close by was the person who did this. She tried to imagine if the attacker was male or female, but saw that it could be either. Some male sex maniac might have struck out at her because he thought she was all alone in the pavilion. But with a woman like Janine Freshell, it could just as easily have been a jealous female—perhaps the wife or girlfriend of one of Miss Freshell’s necessary conquests, lying in wait to find her alone?

She was running so easily that the main gate loomed close in a quick minute, but the closer she got to being able to call for help, the more the awful dread filled her.

What about Randall?

What would this do to him? The more she thought about it, the more the terrible alarm filled her. Randall was going to be hurt by this, and she was beginning to realize what a blow it would be to him. She had to let him know. She had to be the one to tell him, not some unfeeling son of a bitch on the force.

The nondescript man walked as fast as a man can go without breaking into a run. Legs outstretched, back stiff, shoulders back, he covered ground quickly enough to be there and gone before anybody noticed him. He was careful to avoid giving the impression of a man running away from anything. He ground his teeth to the rhythm of his footsteps and timed his thoughts along to the beat: Left, right. Left, right.
Get it done, get it done. Get it done, get it done.

All down the Zone until he reached the main exit. Through the exit and out to the taxis.

First bump in the trail—the taxis were all gone, at this hour. He admonished himself for not knowing that. No telling how long the wait might be.

So, still walking fast—not like an escaping murderer at all—he gave his best imitation of a man finished with his overtime and anxious to get home to his family. The nondescript man glided through the giant lighted gates, passing late-night employees here and there.

Before the second hand of the big clock above the main gate could make a single sweep around the face, he had disappeared down Van Ness Avenue, heading for Nob Hill and the opulent Fair-mont Hotel. That was where Duncan was to be found. He saw clearly now that wherever Duncan was, he himself needed to be. No more of this stalling and cautious maneuvering. After tonight’s debacle with the useless Revenge girl, it was obvious that he belonged near Duncan and no place else.
No place else.

Duncan was the place to vent his rage, the only place, the proper place, the fitting place. Everywhere else he tried, the fires grew faster than he could beat them back. Revenge girls were either a very temporary waste of time, like the first one, or a panicky mess, like the one he had just left behind.

He could no longer tell whether he was being deliberately tormented by God or by the Devil, but it was clear that the big fix was in. Obstacles were popping up in every direction.

Just this very evening, the dead space under the false cliff in the Hall of Science had taken on enough water that it was only a couple of inches below the point where it would begin to flow into the exhibit. As soon as that happened, there would be frantic overnight repairs, water pumps, drainage lines, so that the spongy land would remain cleverly disguised from the visitors walking on top of it. His crew would probably get the work order.

So the dead space was no longer safe. It was useless to him now. Whatever the hell they had built the exposition’s new land out of was making itself a bit more comfortable by settling down into the ocean bed.

He knew enough about ocean currents to realize that the sea had to have penetrated the millions of tiny airways and pockets among the chunks of crumbled streets and buildings that formed the foundation of the new land. By now, the sea had used its relentless pressures to push the water in through all the millions of microscopic pathways, pulling the water back out again with every changing of the tide. He pictured the land underneath the exposition as a porous reef. Every inhale and exhale of the tide forced the ocean water in or out.

He could practically feel the undermined land vibrating under his shoe leather. He could not get away from the exposition grounds fast enough.

At this point, he wondered, what else was he to think, except that this botched business with the new Revenge girl was a clear sign. It was a sign written in giant, bold letters, and it was telling him that things would continue to go badly for him unless and until he confronted the
real
cause of it all. Otherwise, he was surely doomed to be repeatedly derailed by the flimsiest of chance events. Unfairness of every sort would spontaneously manifest, always at precisely the worst moment, to keep right on ruining every single damned thing.

Like tonight.

This Revenge girl should have been perfect. Not really a girl, to be sure. As soon as he grabbed her, he felt the skin on her face. It was an adult woman’s skin, not that of the very young woman she seemed from a distance. He registered the difference but felt no particular reaction. Within reason, age did not have to matter; besides, there were always unexpected breaks in the path with any publicly committed crime. Things happen, you take care of them, you move on.

But then came the proof that certain Forces were toying with him. Proof that unnecessary obstacles were being created by a cruel, outside hand.

She did not fight him. She was supposed to fight him. She did not fight him at all.

What, did the pathetic creature
want
to die?

He had pictured every detail of it. She was supposed to struggle with all of her body. She was to attempt to scream from beneath the iron fingers of his clamped hand.

Her resistance was the final ingredient. It was the key to sending him into that frenzy of exploding emotion that he craved so deeply, while every cell in his body throbbed in the act of annihilating her. The very point was to destroy, to desecrate, to reduce her to nothingness for opposing him. For tormenting him with her beauty, which, if he allowed it, would paralyze him into a state of worshipful awe. And since giving up power was, to him, the same as giving up life, his survival instinct would shred her out of existence at the moment she struck out against him. He was a spring-loaded trap, set for the first sign of a fight.