The Night Caller (21 page)

“Deni called me,” Alicia said over the phone. “She told me you’re still angry with her—with us—because she talked to that reporter who wrote the piece in the paper.”

Coop waited a few seconds for her to say more, but she didn’t. The phone call she was referring to must have occurred yesterday. Either Alicia hadn’t caught the news, or she hadn’t made a connection between Theresa Dravic’s death and Deni Green. The reports Coop had seen and read hadn’t mentioned Deni’s novel found near the body. Never mind, Deni would probably call her soon enough.

“It isn’t only that,” Coop said. “Deni’s increasingly difficult to work with.”

“She said you weren’t returning her calls.”

“True.”

“That’s
you
being difficult to work with.”

“I’m not working with her at all,” Coop said. “Not right now.”

“She asked me to act as an intermediary.” Alicia’s voice remained calm and amiable. He could imagine her in her soft-tone office, with its book-and manuscript-lined shelves and wide window, the distant Statue of Liberty over her shoulder. Two hard women holding out for a future without guarantees.

Her reasonableness irritated Coop. “I thought you were the one who cautioned me about Deni.”

“I was, but things have changed. This project has to be returned to the front burner.”

“It’s still on my front burner. I’m still investigating, just not with Deni.”

“Even if you don’t need her, she can help you, Coop.”

“She hasn’t so far.” But he knew that wasn’t true.

Alicia knew it, too, but she didn’t press him on it. “I know the investigation’s the most important thing to you. And let’s face it, the book is Deni’s top priority.”

“Her goddamn career.”

“Hers and mine,” Alicia corrected. “And if you see it in that light, maybe you can understand why Deni’s so obsessed with this project. I want the book to be a success, too. And that doesn’t mean I don’t want your daughter’s murder solved. But the book has to become a reality before it can succeed.”

“Has she mentioned Bette to you?”

Alicia’s voice changed, became more concerned. “You’re still afraid she’s going to defame your daughter, is that it?”

“Can you guarantee she won’t?”

“I can guarantee that I’ll do what I can to prevent it.”

He thought about his impending drive to Haverton, and what he might find if he made further inquiries. Especially if he leaned harder on Lloyd Watkins. He knew Maureen was right; he should have gone back there long ago, asked more questions. He’d been afraid of the answers. Everyone, he had come to realize, was afraid of certain answers.

“Do you believe me, Coop?”

“Yes.”

“Then call Deni, get together with her so she at least puts something definitive on paper. When she does that, some of the pressure will be off and we’ll have a better idea of where we stand.”

“I’ll call her, but I still don’t trust her.”

“Neither do I. But we could both use her efforts in our behalf.”

“I’ll get in touch with her in a couple of days,” Coop said. “I’ve got some other problems that have to be cleared up.”

“If it’s your health—”

“Who talked to you about my health?”

“Deni mentioned it.”

Coop felt tension build in him. He knew where Deni must have learned about his cancer. “I should have left her in jail,” he muttered.

“What? Who?”

“My ex-wife Maureen. I posted bond for her. She was arrested in that animal rights protest in midtown yesterday.”

“That business about rats?”

“Yeah, human and otherwise.”

“Jesus!”

“A couple of days,” Coop said firmly.

“Enough said,” Alicia told him, “except for be careful.”

“Of what?”

“Humans and otherwise.”

Deni had finished a late snack at the Internet Knish on Amsterdam. It was past midnight, but she remained seated at one of the Internet café’s computers, sipping a latte and cruising the Web.

Most of the other diners had gone. She and a guy who looked like one of the homeless were the only ones left. He was hunched over a table at the other end of the restaurant, munching on a plateful of doughnuts and drinking ice water while he worked his keyboard. Might have been a dot com millionaire last month, Deni thought with a smile, and here he was probably trying to keep warm while he surfed for porn.

Or maybe he was at one of the genealogy sites, searching for some relative he might put the touch on.

The thought suddenly depressed her, that the sad-looking man might be seeking someone related, some soul prevented by blood from ignoring him without guilt.

She threw off the thought and concentrated on the cold-case homicide site she’d found. The Web site was run by some sort of club in Vancouver whose geek members collected information on unsolved murders. Pathetic but potentially useful.

She clicked on a photo of a dead woman seated in a car and sipped her latte while the story behind the picture appeared on the glowing monitor. A domestic dispute. The woman had died after a severe beating at the hands of either her husband or her lover. Both were missing. One might have killed the other. Intriguing, Deni thought, but nothing she might be able to use.

The old Korean guy who managed the place was wiping down a nearby table and glancing over at her from time to time, obviously hoping she’d leave so he could shoo away Mr. Homeless and close shop.

Fuck him,
she thought. To teach him not to stare at her, she deliberately spilled the rest of her latte on the floor and ordered another.

When the confusion of him bringing her a new latte and mopping up the old was ended and she turned back to the computer, she noticed that her purse on the chair next to her was unsnapped. She looked over and saw that the homeless-looking guy was gone. A screen saver, progressively larger fish devouring each other, was showing on his computer’s monitor.

Had she left the purse unsnapped? Maybe, but it wasn’t at all like her. Deni reached inside the bulky purse and as soon as she touched her wallet knew something was wrong. The leather wallet wasn’t folded but open wide and jammed down along the side of the purse, as if it had been hastily returned there.

She yanked out the wallet and looked. There had been forty-seven dollars in it. The money was gone.

Knocking over her fresh latte, she leaped from her chair and sprinted toward the door. Her feet slid out from under her on the wet tiles of the just-mopped floor.

Deni had barely struck the floor, causing a hell of a pain in her left hip, when she was scrambling to her feet. She began running again, but more cautiously, holding on to chair backs and the corner of the counter for support. She had some trouble opening the door and bent back a fingernail getting out onto the sidewalk.

She stood with her fists on her hips and stared up and down the block.

The homeless creep was gone.

“Damn him!” she said aloud, and pushed back into the café, sucking her sore finger.

The Korean guy stood leaning on his mop and staring at her fearfully as she marched a circuitous route over the dry area of the floor to where she’d been sitting, snatched up her purse, and went back outside. She hadn’t paid her check, but just let that bastard stop her and ask for money after hers had been stolen right under his nose.

When she got back to her apartment, still furious, she found that the thief had stolen not only her money, but her key ring.

Her door keys and the key to a locker at a gym where she sometimes worked out were on that chain. It would be easy enough to get another key from the building super, but the locker key might be a bitch to replace. There might even be a charge for having lost it.

She twisted and rattled her doorknob, but she knew it was no use. She never left her apartment without locking the door behind her. Who in New York ever did? It struck her that the locker key wouldn’t be the only expense. To be safe, she’d have to change both her door locks, the knob lock, and the heavy-duty dead bolt. In the meantime, she couldn’t get inside her apartment.

The pain in her right hip flared again, as if taunting her for her bad luck and her bad life. More pain! In her body and in her pyche. Just what she needed. She must have bruised the hip badly when she fell in the restaurant. A deep bone bruise that would hurt for a long time.

Too angry to think straight, Deni slapped the hard, flat surface of the steel-core door, stinging her palm.

Rubbing the sore hand on her thigh, fuming, she limped away to go downstairs and wake up the super so she could share her rage.

The Night Caller smiled. This time things had gone right. Not as they had when he’d taken Theresa Dravic. He recalled her rigid shock, temporarily paralyzing her. It took seconds, eternal seconds, for awareness to fade, and the arc, the knowledge that he was fate and life and she was fated and dying, had been there, had arced between them eye to eye. How smoothly he’d struck so the wound was barely visible, tilting her back quickly as if dipping her at the end of a dance, and lowering her toward the bench so the blood would run away from him. With his latex gloves, he’d just begun to place the book in her right hand and turn to St. Augustine, when horns blared and a man shouted in a way that was almost a loud bark.

No time to think, only to react. The Night Caller bolted into the shadows, then in among the trees.

Only later did he see that what he’d heard was simply an argument between two cab drivers. They hadn’t seen him, but he could hardly go back now. The mood was broken and the ritual was ended prematurely, and the ache years wide inside him would soon return.

But this time his task went well because the woman was careless, sloppy in dress and action. It had been easy enough to reach in and lift Deni Green’s keys from her purse as she stood at a crowded intersection waiting to cross the street. He’d used his old skills and his unbuttoned winter coat to shield his actions, and been so calm that he’d deliberately also taken her wallet. After removing her money from the wallet, he’d even had time to drop it back into her purse. He didn’t need the wallet; he’d already found Deni Green’s address in the phone book, and observed her leaving her apartment building. By the time the traffic light signaled
WALK
, Deni Green’s future had changed.

He fell back but stayed behind her as she walked two more blocks. She seemed preoccupied as before, keeping her head down and charging bull-like so people approaching from the opposite direction veered out of her way.

The Night Caller was glad when she entered Internet Knish. He was familiar with the café, had eaten there more than once and used its computers. She’d be a while with whatever she ordered before approaching the cashier to pay her check and learning her money was missing. If she used one of the café’s computers, as was likely, she might be there a long time instead of returning immediately to her apartment.

He watched her through the window for a few minutes as she settled at one of the tables that gave access to a computer. She placed her order with one of the white-shirted servers. That’s when he made up his mind.

Not the pressure. That wasn’t why he was doing this. But the pressure was building again, the ache and the demon, just as the literature predicted. Waking him at night, looking out of and into him, clawing at him, clutching his sex from the inside. Maybe there would be some relief, but that wasn’t why he was contemplating this. He needed to know what Deni Green knew, thought she knew, didn’t know, would never know.

It was only a short walk to Deni Green’s address. The Night Caller kept his muffler bunched high around his throat and chin, adjusted his tinted glasses, and entered the building.

There was no doorman, and the small tile lobby was empty. With a quick but knowledgeable glance around, he satisfied himself that there were no video cameras covering the lobby, recording the comings and goings of tenants or their visitors. Video cameras, he decided, video cameras that might be anywhere, contributed to the paranoia in the world.

He rode the elevator up to Deni Green’s floor, encountering only a young woman getting out at lobby level as he stepped in. She was carrying one of those insulated containers used to deliver warm carryout food and seemed to pay little attention to him. On her way back to make another delivery, he supposed, coming and going, in and out of people’s lives, people’s memories. Part of them forever without their knowledge. He’d seen people like the delivery woman suddenly and surprisingly appear, seemingly for no reason. Seemingly. Then they were forgotten again. But never gone. Waiting in amber.

Moments later he was inside the writer’s apartment. It was tastelessly furnished and too warm. It smelled of spoiled food. And of course it was sloppy. Empty soda cans on the coffee table, magazines and newspapers on the floor, along with a throw pillow from the sofa. Despite the excessive warmth, he didn’t remove his coat. Instead he went straight to the computer sitting on the desk. Deftly he took off his gloves to reveal latex gloves beneath, and booted the computer.

When the computer was up and running, he inserted a blank disk in its A drive. He didn’t know Deni Green’s ISP or password, so he couldn’t get on-line, but he copied everything he could from her hard drive to the disk he’d inserted. Included in what he was duplicating were her temporary files and cookies that would reveal where her Internet roamings had taken her.

When the first disk ran out of space, he inserted a second disk, copying more files along with her download and e-mail logs, which at present he wouldn’t be able to access.

As he worked he felt an almost overpowering desire to leave something behind so she’d know he had been here, something to frighten her so that she’d lie awake at night, suffer as he’d suffered. Fear, once it lived in you over time, never moved out completely. But fear could eventually become your ally. Then your friend. Even your servant. Fear could be loaned and borrowed. Loaned and called like a debt into bankruptcy.

He was tempted to push his luck. He could stay longer and risk Deni returning home, realizing her door key was missing, and calling for the building super, maybe even the police.

In that way fear was dangerous, even though it gave him great courage and the invisibility of daring.

The joy of fear could be the enemy of caution, the fear of joy the enemy of life.

When he’d copied enough files from the hard drive of Deni’s computer, he placed the disks in one of his coat pockets. From the other pocket he drew a wad of wax. Carefully he pressed the keys on Deni Green’s ring into the wax, one side, then the other. The impressions could be used for obtaining his own keys. The writer would be searching for him, and they would soon be sharing an apartment without her knowledge. The idea of it made him even warmer, but in a way quite pleasant and in the core of him. Deni Green wouldn’t know the power he held over her unless he chose to exercise it. But
he
would know. For now, that was enough.

When he had the impressions, he placed the wax in a plastic sandwich bag and carefully inserted it in a coat pocket.

It was time to go. He’d obtained what he wanted.

There was a small table near the door into the hall, lightly fuzzed with dust.
Clean me!
he felt like writing in the dust with his gloved forefinger.
Clean me, please!

Instead he placed the writer’s key ring on the table so she would think she must have set it down there on the way out and then forgotten. He would leave the dead bolt unlocked, as she might have done even though she remembered it differently.

When she was let into her apartment and saw the keys, she would have to admit it was possible that she’d absently placed them there before leaving, neglecting to key the dead bolt from out in the hall. Memory danced. People forgot. It could have happened that way. Which meant that a thief had stolen her money, but not her keys.

Before long, she would talk herself into thinking it had happened that way. She wouldn’t bother having her apartment’s locks rekeyed. Why should she, since her keys were right there on the table where she must have left them?

He knew she’d think no one had been in her apartment or had keys to it, because she’d want to believe that. She’d want to believe she was safe and the demons were locked out and not in.

The Night Caller knew she’d convince herself of it.

He knew how they thought.

He knew them, all of them. Not just their minds but their hearts. Not just their hearts but their souls.

On the way out of the building, and for a while on the sidewalk, he encountered no one. He might as well have been invisible.

Keeping his head lowered, he wrapped his muffler tighter against the wind. The wind like time, time like wind, scouring away flesh to leaveth only bone.

Deni Green’s new roommate was smiling. But anyone would have had to look closely to know it.